'Some people read the Bible, I read the dictionary'

  Former champion speller Bonnie Schmidt truly wanted to follow last week's Yuma County Spelling Bee on the Channel 2 broadcast and despite having dish TV she said she was disappointed when unable to tune in.

  "When it was in the paper I read it three times with deep interest and wondered if those kids asked for a definition and used it in a sentence because it makes a lot of difference," Schmidt said.

  Schmidt, 81, a  winter visitor from Covington, Ohio, could read fluently at 4 and won The Detroit News spelling bee every year between 1935 and 1944 and still has the gold medallions she won as a top Detroit speller.

  Back then students competed against only those in the same grade. But when she had to get up in front of 50 other students she wondered how good their study habits were, yet a lot of competitors "went down like flies and you could not believe how careless people were, missing simple words like 'hatred,'" she recalled.

  Schmidt grew up an orphan in Mrs. Irving's Foster Home just outside of Detroit. The home did not provide any toys but did have an attic full of books. She set herself a goal of learning 75 new words each week and practiced with her brother as they walked three miles to school every day, she said.

  "I pored over the dictionary hour by hour," Schmidt said. "Some people read the Bible, I read the dictionary. The tragic thing was, when I started to win they (foster home caretakers) never praised me. But that made me want to study harder because I knew I only had a few years left before graduation."

  The spelling bee words only got harder as she progressed through upper grades and students always listened for the gong, meaning they misspelled a word.

  "That made your legs tremor," she said. "To be on stage was frightening but you have to keep a cool head and block out everything except that one word."

  Graduating high school at 16, Schmidt worked for many years as a property manager overseeing as many as 343 apartments at one time. She said her accurate spelling helped her find and keep good paying jobs earning more than $200 per week just after World War II.

  "You had to write a lot of letters about rent increases and policy changes," Schmidt said. "Spelling helped terrifically because if you misspelled a word the boss sent the letter right back to you."

  Even after retiring, her keen spelling was a valuable tool as Schmidt helped others to compose their letters. Eventually Schmidt's composition skills blossomed into a cottage industry when she and her husband, Lester, began producing hand-made greeting cards and mailing them to residents of nursing homes.

  "We donate them to hospitals, a lot went to Life Care Nursing," Schmidt recalled. "And whenever we read in the paper about somebody having a 90th birthday, having a baby, or is sick, we send them a card. It doesn't matter if we know them or not."

  Despite advancing years Schmidt's enthusiasm for spelling bees has never waned. At the Yuma County spelling bee judges gave a lot more Latin root words than she had to struggle with in Detroit, she noted. And although the students made a valiant effort to deal with an advanced degree of difficulty she was disappointed by the performance.

  "Today, I'm appalled by the kids' spelling and I think it's the parents' fault for not correcting their children's homework," she said.

  Teachers can't do it all and often shoulder the blame when students do not measure up to the high academic standards they strive to uphold, she said.

  "You have to study hard and ask somebody to help as a prompter," Schmidt said. "Set yourself a goal - 75 words a week is not a lot if you want to win. And I wanted to win so badly, just to do something for myself."

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William Roller can be reached at wroller@yumasun.com or 539-6858.