The Courtyard was the Springfield Inn in 1998, and Marsha Randall led the Clark County Literacy Coalition when the team of Ron Duncan, Joe Chapman and Norm Wittschen won the inaugural bee by correctly spelling “impregnable.”
Women of the sponsoring Altrusa Club say the event was born of their own frustration at being unable to raise enough money to reach out to the one in four or five Clark County adults unable to read or write.
“There was a lot of flower-selling and things like that going on,” said Marge Greenwood, a retired principal and Altrusan.
But that seemed like small change in the face of the changes they hoped to affect.
The name of the Wittenberg University intern who suggested a spelling bee as a solution is lost to history.
But aware that Troy’s Altrusa Club held a spelling bee, Greenwood visited, took one look and liked what she saw.
The founding worker bees took it from there.
Although her health no longer allows her to participate, Linda Howell is well remembered as the woman in the bee costume that further deflated the spirits of teams that had just misspelled a word by popping the balloons floating above their chairs with a pin at the end of a long stick.
She did much more with Mary Ann Jung, still part of the event, who recalls the lessons learned along the way.
“The biggest mistake we made was to not take notes at the meetings,” said Jung.
Retired from a career as a teacher, principal and director of a day care, she now does a “fantastic” job as director of children’s programs for the Warder Literacy Center, said Executive Director David Smiddy.
Jung said that in building the Literacy Sting, nothing was more crucial than the in-person visits to sponsors and businesses that fielded teams.
Sounding like a godfather who makes people offers they can’t refuse, she said: “When you look them in the face, how can they say no?”
Greenwood drafted her energetic late daughter, Glenda, to emcee the early events, and various Altrusans helped line up judges and pronouncers to sit with former County Commissioner John Detrick, who has a lifetime appointment as the bee’s “Father Timer.”
While organizers are careful to spell out and enforce rules to the dozen three-person teams usually involved, long time club president Sandy Justice-Fitzwater said the Sting’s success is driven by friendliness and fun.
Highlights over the years have included the first round of the 2010 sting, when the team from the Clark County Sheriff’s Department misspelled “sobriety”; the galoshes-clad cheering section fielded by the Clark County Master Gardeners (and other winners of the spirit award); and the playful cleverness shown in team names like the “Word Nerds,” the “Bee-lievers” and the “Wumns Fedrashun of Spel Chekkrs.”
Last year’s audience was charmed when 9-year-old Shashank Palla spelled tiptoe for the Ridgewood School team. To date, the oldest participant has been 91.
The sting continues to generate joy throughout the year for Altrusa volunteers who stock the library and hold an annual bee at the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center; search for the right book to “hook” on the end of a fishing line for a child at a minority health fair; or are encouraged, as Jung is, by an uptick in older children’s interest in reading.
A final note: Although winning teams are rightly cheered, bragging rights are not a tradition among spellers.
After a 2016 win, Shane Latham, of the nine-time champion Legal Beagles of Gorman, Veskauf, Henson and Wineberg, put it this way: “I think we’d all agree that there were 20 or 30 words today at least that none of us really knew how to spell.”
HOW TO GO
What: Altrusa Literacy Sting
When: 11 a.m. Sept. 24
Where: Courtyard by Marriott Springfield Downtown, 100 S. Fountain Ave.
Tickets: $25 in advance only
For tickets, sponsorship or to register a team, call Sandy Justice-Fitzwater, 937-244-7007, or Linda Culler, 937-244-0444
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