From the underbrush of words that everyone knows but not everyone can spell (weird, harass), the 31st Annual National Spelling Bee had progressed to the dark, scary forest of such growths as distichous, objurgation, ephelis, abatis and coulisse, that few can spell and few, least of all the handful of youngsters still competing in the ballroom of Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel, can translate into everyday English. In the second day and the 19th round of the spelldown, 13-year-old Betty Morgan, whose horn-blowing, flag-waving claque from Washington's St. Thomas Apostle School had cheered her through spinosity, serriform and caliginous, choked up on chiaus. Only four spellers were left: Stanley A. Schmidt, 14, entrant of the Cincinnati Post and station WCPO (each contestant was escorted by a markedly unobjective newsman from his home-town paper); Terry Madeira, 13, Harrisburg Patriot and News; Tina Strauss, 13, Pittsburgh Press: and 14-year-old Jolitta Schlehuber, Topeka Capital.
For two more rounds and part of a third, they fought without faltering through such helter-spellers as recalesce, baccivorous and jardiniere. Then Jolitta, hearing dissyllabic correctly pronounced with a short i in the first syllable, asked if it could be pronounced "dye . . ." That pronunciation was wrong, but she was told to go ahead. When she misspelled the word (only one s). judges decided that she had been misled. Jolitta was allowed to try Quincunx. She spelled it, and, in spite of protests from Pittsburgh Pressman Joe Williams, Tina's escort, the deadlock continued. .
In the 24th round, Terry stumbled on another pronunciation tangle, correctly spelled her substitute word. A round later, Tina failed on soubise. Chance for a male uprising—no boy has won since 1954—ended in the 26th round when Stanley splashed into canaliculus. Jolitta, blonde, scrubbed, and pretty in a pink cotton dress that she made herself, easily tobogganed through pogamoggan and rigescent. Terry spelled coruscant and sirocco with no trouble.
Then Terry spelled propylaeum as "pro-pileum." Confidently, just as if she knew that the word means a vestibule or entrance, Jolitta spelled it correctly, then topped it off with syllepsis (the use of a word to modify two or more others, only one of which it agrees with in gender, number, etc.). Prize for Terry Madeira, an eighth-grader at Elizabethtown (Pa.) Junior High School: $500. For Jolitta. an eighth-grader at Harmony Rural School in McPherson, Kans., who studies spelling with her schoolteacher mother, plans to become a missionary, use most of the money for her education: $1,000.
Kudos
Boston College Jacques Maritain, philosopher and teacher LL.D.
Raïssa Maritain, philosopher. . . LL.D.
Barnaby C. Keeney, president, Brown University LL.D.
Boston University Sol Hurok, impresario L.H.D.
Citation: "Whose name is synonymous with the supreme in art, opera, ballet, theater."
Bowdoin College William Zorach, sculptor M.A.
Bradley University Roy Edward Larsen, president, Time Inc Litt.D. in Journalism Charles Kettering, inventor Sc.D.
Citation: "Noted throughout his career for undertaking and solving problems deemed insolvable by many. . . " Chapman College Leslie LeRoy Irvin, inventor of the rip-cord-opened parachute LL.D.