ALUMNI PROFILE: Fred Spain ’58
BY LEIGH ANN COLEMAN ’09

It is near impos­si­ble to get a nation, let alone the world, to com­mit to a new lifestyle unless it has been done before and proven to be suc­cess­ful. After over 50 years in real estate and devel­op­ment, Fred Spain ’58 is in the midst of show­ing the nation how it’s done. Along with his part­ner, world renowned LEEDS archi­tect Dou­glas H. Carter, Spain has acquired the land and is acquir­ing the funds to develop an entire town that addresses the real­i­ties that lie ahead: global warm­ing, ris­ing energy costs and scarcity of resources. In the near future, Ran­son, West Vir­ginia will be a shin­ing exam­ple of how Amer­i­cans can live a new lifestyle that is eco-friendly and attainable.

Spain has had an appre­ci­a­tion for nat­ural life since he was a boy. Just after World War II, his par­ents bought a 50 acre apple and peach farm in Delanco, New Jer­sey, right on the Delaware River. As Spain grew up, his mem­o­ries broad­ened from life on the farm to life on the river. Dur­ing that time, he hunted ducks and geese, trapped muskrats and fished the rivers and creeks in New Jer­sey. He has owned sev­eral boats dur­ing his life and now is cap­tain of “Reel Easy,” a 55-foot sport fish­ing boat. This eas­ily explains the nick­name of “Mark Trail” listed under his class photo in the Eukairia, Wesley’s yearbook.

Although he was a nat­ural guide when it came to explor­ing the out­doors, Spain was on the receiv­ing end when a high school friend named Al Snow led him to dis­cover Wes­ley Junior Col­lege, where he would begin his higher edu­ca­tion. Snow was going into the Sem­i­nary, a path Spain also had enter­tained, so the United Methodist insti­tu­tion had a unique draw. After a meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Slay­baugh and some con­vinc­ing of Spain’s par­ents, the 18-year-old from Delanco offi­cially became a Wolverine.

“My two years at Wes­ley were my grow­ing up years,” said Spain. Wes­ley was a new begin­ning where he found life­long friends by join­ing the Stu­dent Coun­cil and the foot­ball team. He also found strong men­tors like Dean Ster­ling and Lewis “Uncle Louie” Wells. “I think I can say with­out hes­i­ta­tion, that all of us from the Class of 1958 believe that with­out Wes­ley, we would never have seen the bright light of day and what the world truly offered.”

Even though more than 50 years have passed since his days at Wes­ley, Spain can still recall a course assign­ment that has for­ever shaped his per­spec­tive. He rem­i­nisced, “My most mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence of ‘awak­en­ing’ my spirit hap­pened when Pro­fes­sor Wells gave us an assign­ment to write about what we expe­ri­enced when we read ‘See­ing Life’ by Alexan­der Baron. I have been try­ing to see life every day since.”

Fred’s year­book portrait

Spain became inter­ested in real estate when he trans­ferred to Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity after Wes­ley. In 1959 he landed his first real estate job and obtained his license. Almost 20 years later, Spain, with his wife Bar­bara, bought the Bet­ter­Homes and Gar­dens real estate fran­chise for the Wash­ing­ton met­ro­pol­i­tan area. In addi­tion to oper­at­ing his realty busi­ness, he devel­oped numer­ous com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial projects cov­er­ing more than 3,000 acres in Prince William, Fair­fax, Culpeper and Loudoun coun­ties in Vir­ginia. He later sold his real estate offices to the bro­ker man­agers so that he could focus exclu­sively on land acqui­si­tion and devel­op­ment. In 1988 the Spains pur­chased a 200 acre apple farm in Fauquier County, Vir­ginia, which the cou­ple owned for about 10 years before mov­ing back to Wash­ing­ton to a house on the Potomac River.

Among the many posts through­out his career, Spain is a past first vice pres­i­dent of the North­ern Vir­ginia Board of Real­tors and past chair­man of its Fair Hous­ing Com­mit­tee. He is a mem­ber of Jef­fer­son County Cit­i­zens for Eco­nomic Preser­va­tion and National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors and earned the dis­tinc­tion of being named among the “Ous­tand­ing Young Men in Amer­ica” in 1976.

Spain’s foot­ball pose

The Spains are now the prin­ci­pal bro­kers for Amer­i­can Realty and Man­age­ment in Mary­land and Vir­ginia. He and Bar­bara also own the West End Group Investors, LLC, ADS Devel­op­ers, LLC and Grand Vista, LLC, which serve Mar­tins­burg and Ran­son in West Vir­ginia. The West End Group and Grand Vista are cur­rently devel­op­ing over 1,300 acres of res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial land to even­tu­ally become “Ran­sonGreen: A West Vir­ginia Com­mu­nity for a Car­bon Free Future.”

For the past five years, Spain has worked tire­lessly to obtain prop­er­ties and research the lat­est tech­nolo­gies that are required to cre­ate a sus­tain­able city. “With the econ­omy so stressed these days, we have found that the investors and man­u­fac­tur­ers of green prod­ucts need a place to dis­play them — in a true world work­ing envi­ron­ment where these new prod­ucts can be seen and tweaked,” said Spain. “There is no bet­ter place to do this than in homes and com­mer­cial build­ings that are using them in their daily routines.”

Sit­u­ated in one of the most his­toric areas of the coun­try and neigh­bor­ing Charles Town and Harper’s Ferry, the town of Ran­son could not be a more ideal loca­tion to “build the future on the best of the past.” The land boasts beau­ti­ful fields, moun­tains and rivers, yet is close enough for res­i­dents to com­mute to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. while enjoy­ing a 33 per­cent lower cost of liv­ing. With busi­ness already thriv­ing in its sur­round­ing area, Ran­son has all the poten­tial needed to set the new stan­dard. “We are set to prove that our project can pro­duce enough pure energy, with elec­tric and hydro­gen being the power sup­ply and reserve, to run our houses, trans­porta­tion and busi­nesses from the uti­liza­tion of wind, solar and bio­log­i­cal degen­er­a­tion of waste.” Exist­ing on clean and renew­able energy sources, the urban design and archi­tec­ture of Ran­sonGreen will pro­vide a home to more than 12,000 indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies as well as major cor­po­ra­tions and small busi­nesses. The vision is an all-encompassing com­mu­nity that offers a vari­ety of shop­ping and enter­tain­ment along with recre­ational, civic and cul­tural activ­i­ties for its residents.

Fred and Bar­bara Spain pose with Wally, Wesley’s mas­cot, at Homecoming.

Beyond all the hard work they do every day, the Spains con­tinue to enjoy the life they lead and try to keep up with their 13 grand­chil­dren. “We appre­ci­ate the many oppor­tu­ni­ties that going green has offered us with new tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by won­der­ful peo­ple who are work­ing toward build­ing an envi­ron­ment that sup­ports and defends planet Earth,” Spain remarked. While per­se­ver­ing in order to com­plete the Ran­sonGreen project, he and Bar­bara see a future filled with green cities “for gen­er­a­tions of humans to come forth and enjoy the beau­ti­ful planet as we have been able to dur­ing our many years of life.”