High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Kimball was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory to Andrew Kimball and Olive Woolley, sister of Mormon fundamentalist pioneer John W. Woolley. When Spencer was three, his father was called to preside as president of the St. Joseph stake and his family relocated to the town of Thatcher in southeastern Arizona. During his childhood, Kimball suffered from typhoid fever, facial paralysis and once nearly drowned. Four of his sisters died in childhood, and his mother died when he was eleven. After graduating from high school in 1914, he was called to serve as a missionary in the Germany-Swiss Mission, but due to World War I, was reassigned to the Central States Mission until 1916. In 1917 he attended the University of Arizona, but received an army draft notice later that year.