Another Macy Spelling Phenom!

 

by Pa Rock

Proud Grandpa

My youngest grandson, Sullivan Macy, lives in the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City with his parents, Tim and Erin, and his older sister, Olive.  He is ten years old and in the fourth grade.   Late yesterday morning Sully's father sent me the following email:

"We just got back from the Crestview Spelling Bee.  Sully did so good considering he was the youngest one up there.   They started with about 20 spellers and he made it to the final two.  He squared off with a sixth grader who eventually got him, but there was a long battle where they both kept missing really hard words.   But he spelled a lot of tough ones.  The crowd oohed with surprise as he spelled "fabulous" and "democracy" correctly.

"I was so proud of him."

I'm proud of Sully, too - and told him so yesterday evening over the phone.

The Macy family produces great spellers.  I was in a classroom spelling bee when I was in second grade.  Two other students and I made it halfway through the third grade spelling book before I was finally eliminated.  One of the best surprises I had as a child, also around the time I was in second grade, was when my mother brought home a dictionary.  I was fascinated with the new book and laid on the living room floor scanning and consuming it page-by-page to come up with new words to conquer.  The biggest word that I encountered in that new Webster's dictionary was "spondylotherapeutics," a non-standard medical term dealing with spinal conditions.  Seventy years later I still remember that big word and how to spell it!

Sully's older cousin, Boone Macy, Uncle Nick's son, went to a large rural K-8 school near West Plains, MO, called "Junction Hill" where he was, I think, the classroom champ in the local spelling bee each of the nine the nine years he attended.  Boone, who is now twenty-six, was a spelling machine!  Now he is a guide in a commercial cave where he has to deal with "s-t-a-l-a-c-t-i-t-e-s", "s-t-a-l-a-g-m-i-t-e-s", and 

"b-a-t-s"!

And Sully's dad, of course, is a successful screenwriter, a heck of an editor, and a fairly decent speller!

Congratulations, Sully, and thank you for carrying on a proud family tradition!