Everett seniors give it their a-l-l in spelling bee

EVERETT — Some things get better with time.

One of them is mastery of the English language — at least for Loretta Troupe.

At age 89, she won the first ever spelling bee held at the Carl Gipson Senior Center last week.

Her winning word: Stehekin, an isolated town in Washington’s Cascade Range.

The Everett woman was the most senior competitor. About a dozen people participated in the spelling bee, and they had to be 50 or older.

“I like crosswords,” said Troupe, who wore a pink-flowered muumuu. “And I’ve always been good at spelling.”

She said she kept her nerves in check by remembering the famous words from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural presidential address: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Organizers chose words with two themes: a Northwest flavor (lutefisk and angakok) and a tongue-in-cheek category of words that would be top on the mind for older folks (ambulance and cardiopulmonary).

A few regional proper nouns were thrown in, too, such as Fidalgo, Coupeville and Hoquiam.

The spellers were allowed to misspell three words before they were tossed out, but that’s about the only concession.

Otherwise, this was a competition a Scripps National Spelling Bee kid would recognize — down to competitors squeezing their eyes shut and writing in the air before spelling a word.

The word list included brain-stumpers such as “effluvium,” “schizophrenia” and “glockenspiel.”

Director Deb Loughrey-Johnson said someone slipped the idea for the bee into the center’s suggestion box. The bee idea quickly took off with the help of senior center member Rose Johnson, who dressed in a bee costume to recruit spellers.

“It’s a good way to keep your brain stimulated,” said Rose Johnson, who sewed a yellow-and-black felt lap blanket as a prize for the champion.

Jane Gurrance of Everett was knocked out in the middle of the bee. With AARP offering a national bee for seniors, it seems like the idea is sweeping the country, she said.

After Troupe learned she had won, she clasped her hands together, smiled and said, “I can’t believe it.”

Maybe it was a life spent spelling without the aid of a computer’s spell check. Maybe it was all those drills back in her childhood school at Elk Point, S.D.

“Kids nowadays can just look it up on their phones,” she said.

Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com

How would you do? A sampling of words from the spelling bee:

anecdote

anesthesia

aneurysm

annihilate

camaraderie

cappuccino

cardamom

cardiopulmonary

cemetery