2019 spelling champ wins Gazette Scripps Spelling Bee again
Gaston County’s champion speller from 2019, Belmont Middle School s James Dover, returned to the competition Wednesday and won it all over again.
The 2021 Gaston Gazette Scripps Spelling Bee, held at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Gaston Conference Center, featured 27 of the county’s best spellers who currently attend elementary or middle school.
Round six kicked off with just five contestants. Three of them were eliminated during the round, leaving just Haldora Churchill, a sixth grader at Gaston Day School, and Dover, an eighth grader at Belmont Middle.
After Churchill didn t spell “sciatica” correctly in the eighth round, Laurel Morris, retired director of the Gaston County Public Library, asked Dover to spell “posthumous.”
The Gaston Gazette
While the Gaston County Public Library system has been able to serve its patrons during the COVID-19 pandemic through curbside pickup of books and a host of virtual programming, new Executive Director Susan McDonald knows something is missing. It s the human connection, said McDonald who became the top person in the local library system following the retirement of long-time director Laurel Morris last autumn. The libraries are gathering places, she said of the nine locations which make up the system. That is such an important piece of who we are. We can do virtual, we can do visual, but our patrons miss that human connection.
Bob Montgomery, photographed at his Runaway Bay home prior to his arrest. Picture: Jerad Williams. The 76-year-old is expected to be released on parole in December after last year being sentenced to four-years jail by the NSW District Court for two counts of buggery, five of indecent assault of a male and one of procuring an indecent act. He was arrested and charged at Southport in January 2019. Less than one year earlier, he sent correspondence to the Bulletin sharing his views about the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission). The opinion piece was sent without invitation following an appearance by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on television.