Home-schoolers win top spots at spelling bee

WASHINGTON - Youngsters schooled at home swept the top three spots yesterday in the national spelling bee, with first place going to a 12-year-old Missouri boy in a remarkable scholastic feat: Last week, George Abraham Thampy fell one answer short of winning a national geography contest.

Taught "since birth" by his mother, George correctly spelled "demarche" - a step or maneuver - to emerge from a field of 248 contestants in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. He tied for fourth in 1998 and finished in a third-place tie last year.

A measured but deadly accurate style carried the seventh-grader from the St. Louis suburb of Maryland Heights to victory through 15 grueling rounds over two days.

He said a thirst for knowledge, rather than a quest for the $10,000 top prize, motivated him to return for a third try.

"It was really the words. And there were 400,000 of them," he said, referring to the number of entries in the official dictionary used at the 73rd annual bee.

The first home-schooled winner of the national competition was Rebecca Sealfon of New York in 1997. This year, 27 bee contestants were taught at home, ahead of youngsters attending private and parochial schools and second to public-school students, 178.

George paid tribute to his parents, K. George Thampy, a biochemist and physician, and Bina, who works full time teaching her four sons and three daughters.

"My mom and dad taught me everything," said George, who earned $15,000 with his second-place finish in the National Geography Bee, also in Washington.

George's parents, natives of southern India, said teaching their children at home helped them learn as well. "He would gently tell me, `Mom, I don't think this is the right pronunciation,' " Bina Thampy said.

The elder Thampys are proud of George's academic prowess but treasure something more as a result of their approach to education: "His character is what we are most pleased with," his father said.

George's last two rivals also were taught at home:

In second was Sean Conley, 12, of Newark, Calif. "Apotropaic," which means designed to avert evil, tripped him up; he spelled it "apotrypaic." He won $5,000.

Alison Miller, 14, from Niskayuna, N.Y., took third and $3,000. Alison, known for her sharp questioning of judges about definitions, origins and parts of speech, missed "venire." She spelled the word for drawing qualified people as jurors "veniery."

Fourteen-year-old Meghann Belka of Covington was Washington state's highest finisher. The seventh-grader at Mattson Junior High in Kent was eliminated in the fifth round after misspelling "troglodyte," a member of a primitive people dwelling in caves.

Belka is an honors student and an avid reader, said Mary Aquino, her social-studies and language-arts teacher. Belka's class had studied Latin and Greek roots of English words, which helped her qualify for the national competition, Aquino said.

Other Washington participants were: Emma Barker-Perez, 13, a seventh-grader at Langley Middle School in Langley; Hazel Lozano, 14, an eighth-grader at Bremerton Junior High School in Bremerton; and Mallory Gingrich, 14, a home-schooled eighth-grader in Malaga, southeast of Wenatchee.