Phew, got it finally. One side is pretty much done. Here's what I had to do. Compress it with the rental compressor. Then I wrapped a chain around the coils (2nd coil and 2nd last coil). I bolted the chain together and undid the compressor. So at this point the spring is a bit compressed by the chain. That was just enough to be able to catch the lip on the a arm. I jacked up the a-arm until the spring was firmly in place and the chain had some slack. Unbolted the chain, put in my new sway bar end link, the 5 lug spindle, and installed the strut into the tower. Then I removed the jack.
I really didn't anticipate this to be the PITA in this project, but oh well, I guess that's how it goes. Hopefully nothing else will be quite as frustrating. Thanks for everyone's input.
And for those of you wondering how dangerous this is, it really didn't seem that way to me. Like I mentioned earlier, I used chain rated for 1300 lbs and grade 8 hardware. The whole thing was pretty drama free.