Book Worms Sting Competition To Win New Hope Community Spelling Bee

NEW HOPE, PA — After being stung by last year’s coronavirus surge, the Community Spelling Bee buzzed back Friday night with a swarm of community fun and excitement inside the Buck Auditorium at New Hope-Solebury High School.

With names like the Just Winging It, Bee Witched, the Beebops and the Queen Bees, 20 bee teams buzzed into action for this year’s event, the biggest fundraiser of the year for the New Hope-Solebury Free Library.

The competition pits teams from the community against each other in a very public spelling bee. To add to the fun, the teams dress up in bee- and spelling-themed costumes.

“I’d like to welcome everyone to our mostly annual festival of shame and humiliation,” said library board of trustees president Doug Brindley, garnering laughter from the audience. “This is a big community event. This is an opportunity for all the library’s friends and supporters to see each other, to socialize and to enjoy the spectacle of adults having trouble spelling words that students at our Blue Ribbon School would have no trouble with whatsoever.

“But it has another purpose,” he added. “It’s a fundraising opportunity for the library. As a board we have to raise upwards of $80,000 a year just to make ends meet. So the board puts on events like this to raise the money that we need.”

Brindley publicly thanked and commended the teams for raising funds through pledges, for their crazy costumes, for being willing to absorb scorn and scrutiny and for being good-natured, all in support of the library.

As the competition progressed, 20 teams swarmed through a series of words presented by chief enunciator Christopher Whitney. Through the process of elimination (misspelled words), it soon came down to the final four.

As the final swarm got underway, Bill’s Honeybees, the defending champs from 2019 sponsored by None Such Farm, were the first to get stung with the word, “unwonted.”

The Singing Spellers, the Book Worms and Bari/Basso Cordiani buzzed through words like “cummerbund,” “kohlrabi,” and “succotash” until an Irish walking stick known as a “shillelagh” took out the Singing Spellers and Bar/Basso and gave the win to the Book Worms, a team from the Episcopal Church of the Holy Nativity in Wrightstown.

Presenting the trophy to the Book Worms - Lisa Keppeler, Belinda Ash and Bob Brodrecht - were Bee Judges New Hope Mayor Larry Keller and New Hope-Superintendent of Schools Dr. Charles Lentz.

Special awards were also presented by Bee EmBees Julia Klossner and Mike McKenna to this year’s top fundraising team, Bari/Basso Cordiani (Jason Gersh, Eric Muth and Jim Peters), and for best costume, the Zombees (Shannon DeAlmo, Maryann Bickell and Brooke Moore).

The Bee is hosted by the library’s board of trustees and is staffed by volunteers. The event is supported by sponsors, including Addison Wolfe Real Estate, McCaffrey’s Food Markets and Penn Community Bank. Chairing the Bee are Joanne Reszka and Christopher Whitney.