Editor’s Notes: Come on in, sit down for a spell
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The Scripps National Spelling Bee is 100 years old this year.
Back in 1925, only nine participants spelled their way through the competition -- six girls and three boys.
Photos of the event through the years show a growing and evolving group of young people, all decked out in the fashions of their era, and all displaying a mixture of happiness and uncertainty as they take their place in a national spotlight.
By the time you read this, a young person from the Mid-Ohio Valley will be preparing to join this year's group in Washington, D.C., in May.
I don't know who it is yet. In fact, at the moment, I'm looking at a sea of dozens of faces in our special section, trying to figure out how many chairs we'll need on stage for each round and whether I've crossed off everything on my to-do list before this year's Marietta Times Regional Spelling Bee.
It could be any one of them. I'm looking at Schrodinger's spellers as I write.
But by Saturday, it will be only one of them, planning with his or her family and looking forward to a spring of studying spelling word lists before Bee Week. (It's not as bad as it may sound to some, especially when you start learning about definitions and language of origin -- you can learn a lot when you learn about words.)
How cool would it be to be someone between the ages of 9 and 14 (again, it could be any of them), ready to spend as much as a week in our nation's capital, participating in "Bee Week activities and special events," including the 100th anniversary celebrations?
We at the newspaper are lucky to be part of making that happen.
But it's not just us. We have wonderful partners -- starting with the teachers and schools from which these students make their way to the regional bee.
Every year, I'm grateful for the partnership we have with Peoples Bank, which sponsors our grand prize. And I'm grateful for the Mid-Ohio Valley Players, who, no matter what they have going on in their own busy season, find a way to make room for spellers, families and a scatterbrained regional bee coordinator to take over their theater.
I'm grateful for the rest of the newsroom, which during the week or so before the regional bee tolerates me running around yelling things like "Who took the dictionary!? No, the BIG one?"
(It was under a pile of other stuff on a table in my office. Whoops.)
Though I look back fondly on the spelling bees I was in during my own elementary and middle school years, I'm also grateful I don't have to try to spell some of the words on the list I have in front of me now.
Whoever wins this one will have done some work, that's for sure.
It's such a wonderful event, and with the exception of tying up a few loose ends, by the time you read this column, the newspaper's role in it will be over. Until August.
Still, it's nice to know the community continues to support us in having such a role in an event that has been around for a century. T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U!
Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com