Beccy, I came in 13th in the National Spelling Bee in 1966. My family and I had a wonderful week in Washington. I missed "avocet". (That was before they made bicycle seats!) I won the Delaware Valley Bee and went to Washington by spelling "gummiferous", beating out a kid from New Jersey named Alex Knisely, who spelled it the way I would have if I'd gotten it first, with one 'm'. Luck of the draw. A few years later I was a junior at Princeton and ran into a new freshman...Alex Knisely.

Aloha,
Mark