A. N. Spanel, 83; Inventor, Manufacturer, Activist

A. N. Spanel, the inventor who founded International Latex Corp. and then spent a good deal of his fortune placing newspaper advertisements across the country espousing his views on national and world affairs, has died at his home here at age 83.

Spanel, considered a leader in health care for his employees, died Saturday.

When not running his company, which he founded in 1932 to manufacture girdles, infant wear and brassieres, or writing commentary for the advertisements he sponsored for 40 years in a series of newspapers, Spanel was writing checks to his favored charities.

Among them were cancer research, child-care centers and Israel.

His firm, which became known as International Playtex Corp., was a spinoff of the Vacuumizer Manufacturing Co. That company materialized as a result of Spanel’s invention of a garment bag that could be moth-proofed by a vacuum cleaner.

Holder of more than 2,000 patents, Spanel provided employers of his Dover, Del.,-based firm with free Vitamin C, offered them paid health and life insurance policies and a profit-sharing program.

Spanel was born in Russia but his family moved to Paris and then to Rochester, N.Y., when Spanel, son of a tailor and a laundry worker, was 10. He invented his garment bag shortly after leaving the University of Rochester and that produced his first million dollars.

He began inserting his series of advertisements in newspapers nationally in the late 1930s. He once sued Westbrook Pegler for $6 million after the columnist charged that the ads were inspired by Communists. Pegler retracted the charge in 1949. Spanel started the series partly to try to persuade America to end its isolationist policies.