Frank Neuhauser had already outspelled more than two million schoolchildren to become the last speller among nine finalists. His winning word was easy for him, thanks in part to the common garden flower that his family grew in the backyard: “G-L-A-D-I-O-L-U-S.”
With that, the 11-year-old from Louisville, Ky., became the first National Spelling Bee champion. It was June 17, 1925.
Tens of millions of grade-school spellers later, the 100th anniversary of what is now the Scripps National Spelling Bee will close on Thursday night with the crowning of another new champion.
The final word is likely to be a bit more challenging than what Frank faced — words in last year’s final round included “desmotrope,” “heautophany” and “nachschläge” — and the payoff will be significantly larger. Frank went home with $500, about $9,200, with inflation factored in. The winner on Thursday will take home $50,000.
A lot has changed since that first contest. Today’s competition is televised and attracts spellers from around the world. But Thursday night’s competition is about remembering a century of spelling, and dozens of past champions will be there to cheer on the next member of their exclusive club.
“We have 42 of our past champions, which is over half of our living champions, who are coming back this year. We’ve never seen an assemblage of past champions like this,” said Corrie Loeffler, the bee’s executive director. Ms. Loeffler, herself a former national spelling bee competitor, said champions from as far back as 1960 will be attending to help welcome a new peer to the club of former winners.
World War II and the coronavirus pandemic forced organizers to cancel the competition a total of four times, so this isn’t the 100th contest. But organizers are still planning to celebrate the milestone with an archival exhibit at the conference center, a coffee-table book and a special website commemorating each contest.
Here are some memorable moments that show how the competition has evolved over the past century:
1920s
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1925: The first spelling bee is held.
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1926: Pauline Bell, also of Louisville, became the first female champion and took home an increased prize of $1,000 after correctly spelling the word cerise.
1930s
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1936: MacNolia Cox, a 13-year-old from Akron, Ohio, became the first Black contestant to reach the final round. Although the contest never barred Black participants, MacNolia and her mother had to sit in the back of the train on their way to Washington and were subjected to other discriminatory Jim Crow-era laws after arriving.
Her story inspired the 2023 children’s picture book “How Do You Spell Unfair? MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee,” by Carole Boston Weatherford.
1940s
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1941: Scripps-Howard Newspapers took over administration of the national spelling bee from the Louisville Courier-Journal, which had sponsored the contest until then.
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1943-45: World War II forced the first cancellation of the contest for three consecutive years starting in 1943.
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1946: The spelling bee was televised for the first time in history.
1950s
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1957: The competition lasted almost 10 hours, becoming the longest in history. Dana Bennett of Colorado and Sandra Owen of Ohio were ultimately named co-champions after exhausting the official word list.
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1959: Gerardo Aguirre of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, became the first non-U.S. citizen to participate.
1960s
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1962: The N.A.A.C.P. issued a memo about a Virginia school district that barred Black students from participating in their local contests, preventing them from qualifying for the national competition. The Lynchburg News, the local newspaper that sponsored those contests, had adopted a “whites-only” policy even though the national contest had always been integrated.
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1968: Robert F. Kennedy, a Democratic front-runner for president, was assassinated in Los Angeles and pronounced dead on June 6, the first day of the 1968 national competition. Some planned excursions and activities for spellers in the Washington, D.C., area were canceled or modified as a result. The bee proceeded as scheduled.
1980s
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1985: Balu Natarajan of Chicago became the first Indian America champion after correctly spelling the word milieu. Nearly 30 Indian Americans have won the spelling bee since, creating a phenomenon in the community that was later explored in the 2020 Netflix documentary “Spelling the Dream.”
1990s
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1997: Rebecca Sealfon of New York City became the first home-schooled spelling bee champion. Her winning word was euonym.
Recalling her victory in an interview with The New York Times last week, Ms. Sealfon said that the biggest change since her competition has been the role of the internet in preparation.
“The web was kind of in its infancy. There were some websites that were put up by the bee, a lot of them about roots. But most of my preparation, and the really important bulk of my preparation, came from mail-ordered study materials,” she said.
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1998: Jody-Anne Maxwell of Kingston, Jamaica, became the first Black champion. Her winning word was chiaroscurist.
2000s
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2002: “Spellbound,” a documentary following competitors in the 1999 championship, was nominated for an Academy Award.
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2003: Former champion Jacques Bailly joined the national spelling bee as head pronouncer. His winning word at the 1980 bee was elucubrate.
2010s
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2019: A stunning tie produced a record-breaking eight winners. The winning words were: auslaut (Rishik Gandhasri), erysipelas (Erin Howard), palama (Abhijay Kodali), aiguillette (Shruthika Padhy), odylic (Rohan Raja), cernuous (Christopher Serrao), pendeloque (Sohum Sukhatankar) and bougainvillea (Saketh Sundar).
The “octochamps,” as Ms. Loeffler called them, “were so incredibly prepared for that moment and really showed the height of excellence in this competition,” she said. Still, the final went on for so long that it inspired a new rule known as the spell-off to avoid extensive ties and overtime.
2020s
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2020: The spelling bee was canceled for the first time since World War II because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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2021: Zaila Avant-garde of New Orleans became the first Black American champion. Her winning word was Murraya. The contest was held in Orlando, Fla., because of Covid restrictions at the Maryland resort where the competition was previously held.
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2022: The spell-off was used for the first time. Harini Logan of San Antonio won after spelling 22 words correctly from a list of 30.
Margalit Fox contributed reporting.
The post Memorable Moments a Century After the First Spelling Bee appeared first on New York Times.
