D-R-O-U-G-H-T: It's been 23 years since Florida has had a National Spelling Bee champion
With the National Spelling Bee underway this week, it's a good time to look back at past events to see how Florida has done in the competition and some other interesting historical facts.
Has anyone from Florida ever won the National Spelling Bee?
Yes. There have been two winners from the Sunshine State:
Wendy Guey
HOMETOWN: West Palm Beach
CHAMPION: 1996
AGE: 12
WINNING WORD: vivisepulture
DEFINITION/MEANING: Premature burial, also known as live burial, burial alive, or vivisepulture, means to be buried while still alive. Animals or humans may be buried alive accidentally on the mistaken assumption that they are dead, or intentionally as a form of torture, murder, or execution.
DID YOU KNOW: In a July 2021 story, the New York Times caught up with Guey for a story it did on four past winners of the National Spelling Bee asking them what the competition taught them about hard work, grit and luck. According to the Times story, today she is Wendy Guey Lai and was living in San Francisco and teaching middle school math. The Times reported when she won and it was her fourth year in the competition.
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Nupar Lala
HOMETOWN: Tampa
CHAMPION: 1999
AGE: 14
WINNING WORD: logorrhea
DEFINITION/MEANING: Pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech. incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility.
DID YOU KNOW: According to a story published by the website Distractify in 2020, Nupar was featured in a Netflix documentary called "Spelling the Dream." She was also featured previously in 2002 in a documentary called "Spellbound", which was released to critical acclaim and even earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.
After attending high school in Fayetteville, Ark., she did her undergraduate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, graduating with a degree in Brain Cognitive and Behavioral Science. Nupur worked for three years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), conducting functional MRI research in cognitive neuroscience before she went on to complete her Master’s in Cancer Biology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2015. She also earned a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock and completed her medical residency at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.
According to her Linked In page, today Lala is a Neuro-Oncology Fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
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What state has had the most National Spelling Bee champions?
Texas has had 16 champs.
Ohio is next with nine winners.
Florida is in a group of nine states that have had at least two champions since the spelling bee started in 1925. The other states with two winners: Alabama, Illinois, Georgia, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Virginia.
Who was the first winner of the National Spelling Bee?
Who was the first winner of the National Spelling Bee?
NAME: Frank Neuhauser
HOMETOWN: Louisville, Kentucky
CHAMPION: 1925
WINNING WORD: gladiolus
DEFINIITION/MEANING: Gladiolus is a genus of perennial cormous flowering plants in the iris family. It is sometimes called the 'sword lily,' but is usually called by its generic name.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: National spelling bee history includes two champions from Florida
