Spike graduated from The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina in 1968 and entered active duty with the U.S. Army as a Second Lieutenant.  He was an Army Green Beret, a Professor of Military Science and a Department Director at the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.  He retired in January 2001 as a colonel.  In September 2004, he became the first Supervisory Intelligence Analyst for the Kansas City Division of the FBI, retiring from that position in January of 2013.

Spike has been a student of the War Between the States since he was about ten.  He has been a Confederate reenactor since he was 13 and is currently a member of the 3rd Battery Missouri Light Artillery, CSA.  He is a Life Member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, where his is the commander of the Major Thomas J. Key Camp #1920 in Johnson County, Kansas. 

He is a past president of the Civil War Round Table of Kansas City, chaplain for the Monticello Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, and a member of the Special Forces Association.

Spike has had numerous articles published in nationally circulated Civil War magazines.  His first book, The Sumter Flying Artillery: A Civil War History of the Eleventh Battalion Georgia Light Artillery, was released by Pelican Publishing Company in October of 2009.