Community spelling bee raises money for Toledo literacy agency

Left to right Sandy Norton, Todd Huss, Alma Reising, and Veronica Hughes of Root Learning win the 24th annual Blade Corporate & Community Spelling Bee Thursday at the Park Inn in Toledo. THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH Enlarge | Photo Reprints

Before heading out to The Blade's Corporate and Community Spelling Bee Thursday, Veronica Hughes did a little leafing through the newspaper to look for prominent names that might turn up, particularly during the event's three "speed" rounds.

Her diligence paid off for her team when she provided the correct last-name spelling of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, which tripped up most of the rest of the 34-team field and helped Root Learning to the first perfect score in the four years since The Blade's bee — now in its 24th year overall — adopted its current format.

"I just guessed" that Papandreou might be in the bee, Ms. Hughes, a Root Learning editor and self-described "Names in the News" specialist, said afterward. "I looked at all the hard names in sports, all the hard names in the news."

"No freaking way! Nobody will believe us," Sandy Norton, a legal secretary at Root, said after the four-person team finished all 12 rounds without having missed any of the 24 words participants had been asked to spell, including three five-word "speed" rounds. The correct spellings of broccoli, Boehner (as in House Speaker John from Ohio: don't forget the first ‘e'!), and the movie "Bullitt" were worth double credit, making 27 a perfect score.

"We look at words every day," team captain Alma Reising, an eight-year bee veteran, said to explain Root Learning's success. Todd Huss, Root's pop-culture specialist, aced the five movie names in the final "speed" round, including the very tricky "Se7en."

A team from law firm Spengler Nathanson P.L.L. finished second with 23 points, while the Lucas County Prosecutor's office, with 21 points after 12 rounds, survived a tie-breaker with two long-standing Blade bee powerhouses — two-time defending champion Toledo Symphony (representing KeyBank) and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library (representing Ernst & Young) — to place third.

The bee raised a record $49,870 in donations to Read for Literacy, Toledo's volunteer literacy agency, which provides services to about 1,300 area adults and children annually through three programs: Adult Basic Education, English as a Second Language, and Creating Young Readers. All are one-on-one with volunteer tutors.

Thirty-five local companies and organizations, including The Blade, fielded teams or sponsored teams organized by local non-profits. Seven others made contributions but did not send teams to the competition.

Participating in The Blade bee "has always been on my bucket list," said Jean Poplawski, a Read for Literacy volunteer tutor whose team represented the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority. "I was a child of an immigrant who couldn't read English. I thought this was going to be a gift to others, but it has really been a gift to me."

Unlike a traditional spelling bee, in which individual competitors are asked to spell words and face elimination if they miss, the Blade bee's current format keeps all teams involved until the scores are tallied.

After pronouncer Paul Moffitt read each word, its part of speech, origin, and definition, and used it in a sentence, each team had 60 seconds to decide on a spelling and write it on a whiteboard. During the three "speed" rounds, Mr. Moffitt read off a brief description of each word before saying it just once.

The team concept has its pitfalls: Ginny O'Hara, on the Brooks Insurance team, said she knew how to spell Mr. Papandreou's name correctly, but got voted down by her teammates — a tale of woe that repeated itself at many tables during the bee.

The words were challenging throughout, with none in the nine regular rounds spelled correctly by all teams. The easiest was "harangue," spelled correctly by 27 of 35 teams, while all but seven misspelled "inoculate" and "flammeous" — the former most commonly used as a synonym for vaccinate, the latter meaning "resembling flame." (A breakdown of the "speed" round results was not available.)

The single ‘n' in inoculate was the big problem for the spellers, while the Toledo Fire Department team was among many who missed the second ‘m' in flammeous.

And don't believe the oft-misspelled signs you see in supermarkets and at roadside stands: a popular melon is spelled cantaloupe, with that pesky ‘u' before the ‘p' and an ‘a', not an ‘e', for the second vowel.

As usual, there was a spirited, good-natured rivalry between the fire department, the Toledo Police, and the mayor's office, with the latter coming out on top with 18 points while police outscored fire, 16-8.

"We beat police and fire, and that's all that matters!" Ellen Grachek, labor and employment section chief in the city law department, crowed after the scores were totted up.

"It's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you beat the fire department," Police Chief Michael Navarre said early in the competition, while explaining away as an honest mistake his having told the mayor's office beforehand that the bee was to be held at a hotel in Monroe, not the Park Inn downtown.

"It's all about knowing your limitations," Toledo fire Deputy Chief Brian Byrd said to explain why his team wrote "shot" as its spelling for "inoculate."

Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.