AP
- The Scripps National Spelling Bee has been around since 1925.
- Every year, hundreds of kids across the country come together to compete for the coveted honor of being the best speller in America.
- Many of these winners go on to have future success. Some even return to the Spelling Bee to work there as adults.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
You obviously have to be pretty bright and extremely dedicated to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. But does that lead to future success?
For the most part, yes. Among the winners, there are lots of graduates of top schools and plenty of other successes. Unsurprisingly, many of them go into brainy professions, becoming doctors and lawyers. One even became a prominent journalist and was part of a newspaper team that won a Pulitzer Prize.
Max Nisen contributed to a previous version of this post.
Frank Neuhauser won the very first spelling bee with the word "Gladiolus" and was a patent lawyer at GE and Bernard Rothwell & Brown. He lived to age 97.
YouTube
Neuhauser passed away in 2011. He was just 11 years old when he won the very first spelling bee 1925.
He went on to attend the University of Louisville and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. While working at General Electric, the company offered to send him to law school, so he attended George Washington University and had a long, successful career as a patent lawyer after obtaining his law degree in 1940.
1969 winner Susan Yoachum was a journalist and part of a San Jose Mercury News team that won a Pulitzer in 1989. She later became political editor of The San Francisco Chronicle.
CSPAN
After winning the competition and inspiring a surge of Dallas students to sign up for the spelling bee, Yoachum grew up and attended Southern Methodist University, going on to become a respected journalist. She was even part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team of reporters in 1990.
Yoachum passed away in 1998 at the age of 43 from breast cancer.
Jonathan Knisely won in 1971 with the word "shaloon," and is now a doctor and faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
AP
According to Knisley’s LinkedIn, he has been at the Cornell teaching hospital since June 2017. He works in the oncology department.
After winning the bee, he attended Yale University for undergrad then the University of Pennsylvania for medical school — not too shabby.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- Can you spell the hardest words from this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee?
- Meet the 8 incredible middle-schoolers who all won the Scripps National Spelling Bee and each took home $50,000
- In an unprecedented move, 8 were named Scripps National Spelling Bee co-champions after the finals failed to stump half of the finalists
FOLLOW US: Business Insider is on Facebook
Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Gabbi Shaw)