In for a good spell

Congratulations to Sameer Mishra, of West Lafayette, Indiana!

Sameer, age 13, is the winner of the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee championship, the sole survivor out of 288 competiters from every American state and territory and Canadian province, as well as a scattering of entries from other nations, such as Germany, New Zealand, and South Korea.

As a guy for whom correct spelling is important -- but who still occasionally has to whisper to himself "I before E except after C, or when sounded as A as in neighbor and weigh" -- I view spelling bees, and similar events such as geography bees, as equivalents to the NCAA play-offs, play-offs for kids who may feel more comfortable at a computer, or reading a book, than on a basketball court.

Certainly the work required to even qualify for a national spelling bee is equal to that required of a star athlete. Sameer won by spelling the misleadingly simple word guerdon, meaning something that someone has won. Other contestants met their doom when facing words such as prosopopoeia, opificer, étagère, secement, and sheitel. (And don't you try to kid me that you know what any of those words mean!)

I've been impressed with the young people who prepare for spelling bees ever since I saw the 1999 documentary Spellbound. The movie impressed me with the varied background of the participants in these events, kids from all economic levels of our society, and from the full spectrum of ethnic groups. In Spellbound, some of the most successful spellers were children of immigrants from India -- as is Sameer, whose parents immigrated from central India and whose father now teaches microbiology at Purdue. Scenes from the film that revealed how all the youngsters (but the Indian-Americans, most notably) prepared for the bees -- total commitment, complete concentration, and daily devotion of every spare moment of their lives -- gave me some idea of what it takes to reach the national levels.

When I hear Americans grumble about all the foreigners immigrating to this country, I think of people like Sameer and his father -- and about his older sister, herself a former competiter at the national spelling bee, who received her letter of admission to Princeton on the same day that her brother won the championship. I think about the young Americans of Indian, Japanese, and Hispanic descent in Spellbound, and the ceaseless effort they put into preparing for spelling bees, the same effort that they predictably will devote later to their educations and careers.

I wonder who the grumblers are kidding, besides themselves?

The day we stop attracting immigrants to this country will be the day I know for sure that our sun as a nation is setting.

But let's forget the politics for now. Congratulations not only to Sameer, but to all the hard-working boys and girls who were smart enough and dedicated enough to struggle their way through local and regional competitions, and joined the elite group of 288 who competed at the national level.

Including, of course, our local Washington state heroes, Hunter Lehmann, of Poulsbo; Elysa C. Stone, of Anacortes; Elizabeth Zhang, of Snoqualmie; and Christian C. Menendez, of Tonasket.

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Photos, top to bottom: Sameer Mishra (Indiana); Lance Letson Hungar (Virginia); Hunter Lehmann (Washington).