The 22nd Scripps National Spelling Bee was held in Washington, District of Columbia on Friday, May 27, 1949, at the auditorium of the National Press Building, sponsored by the E.W. Scripps Company.
Competition
The winner was 13-year-old boy Kim Calvin of Canton, Ohio and sponsored by the Canton Repository, correctly spelling the word dulcimer, followed by onerous,(28 May 1949). Ohio Boy Wins Spelling Bee; Californian Third, San Bernardino Sun ("Calvin, 13, from Avondale school, correctly spelled "ducimer" after Shea spelled it "dolcimer" ... Calvin correctly spelled "onerous" to clinch the championship.") and winning $500.(20 April 2012). Kim J. Calvin (obituary), The Washington Post(28 May 1949). Ohio Youth Wins National Spelling Bee, Daily Iowan, p. 4 James Shea, 13, of Brooklyn, New York, and sponsored by the New York World-Telegram, placed second (missing dulcimer). Worn out from almost five hours of spelling, Shea almost fainted at the end of the bee.Macguire, James. American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds, p. 54 (2006)Harbour, Nicole (22 June 2013). Spelling veteran shares his memories with three year contestant Yasir Hasnain, Herald ReviewRuhe, Shirley (13 October 2015). Arlington: Shea Wins Spelling Bee 67 Years Later: But this time without fainting, The Connection Fred Shoup of Palo Alto, California placed third and won $100.(2 June 1949). Fred Shoup, The Stanford Daily It was the first time in the Bee's history that boy spellers took the top three slots, and Calvin was the 7th boy to win in the 22 Bees held to date.Boy Wins Spelling Bee, Arizona Republic
There were 49 contestants in this bee,(27 May 1949). U.S. Spelling Champs Come From All Sections, Evening Independent (Associated Press)(21 May 1949). Keith Carries Lucky Chestnut to Bee, El Paso Herald-Post ("The finals will be held next Friday at the National Press Club in Washington with 49 spelling champions from all parts of the U S competing") and 614 words were used over 58 rounds.Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Ohio, Volume 123, p. 1133 ("Kim Calvin captured the championship in the fifty-eighth round of spelling. It took 614 words of the 750 on the pronouncer's list to attain the coveted goal. These are the word Kim Calvin spelled correctly during the long tense battle of the dictionary: gamble, benign, epaulet, axiom, anent, gingham, demurring, cuticle, voracious, disparate, enigma, insidious, ratification, patrician, dais, innate, annuity, camisole, harangue, pompous, pungent, fictitious, sentient, reprieve, connoisseur, surreptitious, brochure, papyrus, surveillance, equipage, seraphic, scintillate, bouillon, malign, irascible, liquefy, transient, geopolitical, adolescence, solder, elegiacal, sarcophagus, perfidious, innocuous, abhorrence, philology, discountenance, capillary, atrophy, annihilate, appurtenant, tonsillectomy, antimacassar, vermilion, acolyte, residual, chandelier, satellite, hirsute, dulcimer and onerous ...")
References