Lee Pitts Spooner and her friend Nicky have been a ministry team for 30 years. Sometimes Spooner and Nicky enlist the help of two other pals named Suzie and Nicole.
They travel to churches, conferences and events in the Southeast and the rest of the United States and even around the world, sharing Spooner’s testimony as well as the love of God. Even though they are a quartet, there’s just one voice behind the group — Spooner’s.
Nicky, Suzie and Nicole are puppets, and Spooner — a ventriloquist — provides their voices and expressions.
“Nicky gives me confidence I don’t have on my own,” said Spooner, who uses her ministry to address her difficult childhood. “And even though I work with puppets, the ministry isn’t just for children. Our mission is to reach the entire family.”
Family is important to Spooner, whose early years were tainted by abuse and frequent moves.
When her family relocated to the Sylacauga area, she started attending Marble City Baptist Church, Sylacauga. Spooner developed a relationship with Music and Youth Minister Bob DeLoach and his wife, Betty, and they opened their home to her. After an especially violent domestic incident, she begged her mother to let her live with the DeLoachs.
“I told my mom, ‘If you really love me, you’ll let me go stay with them,’” Spooner, who moved in with her foster family at age 15, remembered. “Now, when I think about all my foster parents have done for me, I can’t help but cry.”
Although she now shares the art of ventriloquism with anyone, Spooner discovered her talent in a more isolated way, practicing quietly behind closed doors until she one day showed her foster parents the skills she had developed.
Since then, puppetry has been an outlet for her to talk about the miracles God has worked in her life.
Betty Burnham, Spooner’s foster mother who remarried after her husband’s death, said Spooner’s talent brought a once shy girl out of her shell.
“She could make the puppets say things she never could,” Burnham said.
“She’s grown from an introverted little girl into someone who can get in front of anyone and share her story.”
Spooner’s husband, Larry, has been amazed by the lives that have been touched by her ministry.
“I don’t know how many thousands of people have been saved because of her ministry and not just children,” he said. “She’s ministered to so many women and men, too, by sharing how she dealt with the pain and hurt from her childhood.”
Larry Spooner works as his wife’s manager, publicist and sound technician. The Spooners married in 1993, when her career was already well established. The two began working and traveling together and eventually were joined on the road by their children, Jonathan and Joanna.
These days, though, since the children are in school, Larry Spooner typically stays home in Mobile while Lee Spooner travels. The couple are members of Cottage Hill Baptist Church, Mobile.
Next on Lee Spooner’s agenda is a trip to South Africa, where she will minister to an estimated 6,000 students ranging from elementary school age through college age.
For more information, visit www.leepitts.org.
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