The St. Bernard Sheriff’s Office participated in the 19th annual Rotary Club Corporate Spelling Bee held Feb. 6 in the Chalmette High School cafeteria, Sheriff James Pohlmann said.
The Sheriff’s Office team, comprised of Dep. Michelle Waites and Dep. Keith St. Germain, of the Corrections Division Juvenile Detention Center, and Chaplain Aaron Johnson, of the Community Relations Division, competed against 18 other teams for best speller bragging rights.
Ironically, the Sheriff’s Office team’s first word to spell was ‘guilty.’ They managed to stay in the game for several more rounds but were eventually taken out when they struggled to spell the word pangolin, an African and Asian mammal that has a body covered with horny overlapping scales, a small head with elongated snout, a long sticky tongue used for catching ants and termites, and a thick, tapering tail.
A team from the Bayou Buccaneers/Dominique You Lodge took home bragging rights as this year’s best spellers and first place winners. Second place went to Mel Malone’s State Farm Insurance Agency, and Ochsner’s St. Bernard Parish Hospital took home third place.
Each year, for $300, teams of three people from local businesses, organizations and public offices are invited by the Rotary Club to participate in a fun competition and help raise money for a worthy cause. Refreshments are sold, and there are raffles and door prizes.
Proceeds from the event are used by the Rotary Club to promote community literacy programs, to equip area third-graders with their own dictionaries, and provide scholarships to Nunez Community College students.
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