The bees were buzzing at the Literacy Council of Fort Bend County’s Great Grown-Up Spelling Bee. Thirteen teams of three adults stung, buzzed, spelled-again and were as sweet as honey at our 2nd Annual Spelling Bee.
After many rounds of spelling, the last teams buzzing were the Bee-FF’s from the Fort Bend Junior Service League and Drone Quixote from Rice & Gardner. It was a grueling back and forth competition between the two teams until the Bee was finally declared a tie. Six spellers were inducted into our Honey Hall of Fame: Kavita Self, Yolanda Celestine and Tracy Guillory from the Bee-FF’s and Jim Rice, Claire Marshall and Sonal Bhuchar from Drone Quixote. The winning teams received a bobble head bee trophy and a gift certificate to a local restaurant presented to them by event emcee, Nancy Olson. All of the participating spellers received a medal for their hard work.
The teams were the highlight of the event. The team from the City of Sugar Land won the Spirit Award. Their team members, Lisa Dooley, Heather Pasat and Nan Stout dressed to symbolize Harry Potter; therefore, it was only suitable to name their team, Sugar Land School of Beewarts. Manish Asthana, Margo Pasko and Melinda Silva didn’t want the City of Sugar Land to get all of the attention, so they wore their Dr. Seuss hats and aptly named their team, the Cats in the Hats. The individual costume that was the “bees knees” was worn by none other than Ray Aguilar. His team, sponsored by Riverstone was comprised of Trey Reichert and Charlotte Young. Their team, the Leedarchip Weenurs, was quite entertaining!
Many teams tried with every ounce of brain power to spell the difficult words given to them by judges, Dr. Tim Jenney and Mr. Dick Phillips. The time-keeper and bell-ringer, Shayne Newell received many excuses from the spellers and even had her bell stolen from her as the spellers began to get rowdy when the words became increasingly harder.
The Literacy Council’s Great Grown-Up Bee was a fun and playful event. The audience members almost had as much fun as the Spellers. “Our goal for this year’s event was to get the community involved to raise money for our programs and engage in some friendly competition,” said Brenda Bowman, Executive Director, Literacy Council of Fort Bend County.
This fabulous event would not have been possible without our sponsors. Your generosity toward this event made it a success.
On a final note, the Literacy Council would sincerely like to thank the event co-chairs, Kevin Gardner and Crissy Nolen and their committee: Emily Kalk, Shayne Newell, Patti Parish-Kaminski and Tanya Sterling.
To learn more about the Literacy Council, or how to become involved with the 3rd Annual Great Grown-Up Spelling Bee, please visit www.ftbendliteracy.org or call 281.240.8181.