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Daughter carries on dad’s legacy as volunteer at Vindicator Spelling Bee
By Denise Dick
BOARDMAN
For Pam Pasquale, The Vindicator 83rd Regional Spelling Bee is about T-R-A-D-I-T-I-O-N.
Pasquale is volunteering at the bee, which begins at 9 a.m. Saturday in the Chestnut Room in Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University, as a checker for the first time.
Checkers double-check words spelled by participants, providing another level of verification for judges.
It’s a role her father, the late John Rozzo, filled for about 45 years.
Last year, he became a judge. That was his last bee.
“The spelling bee is the last thing he did,” Pasquale said.
It was in mid-March, and Rozzo became ill in April and died last June.
For the last nine years, Pasquale accompanied her dad to the bee, picking him up in the morning, taking him to YSU and sitting in the front row while he volunteered.
“Afterwards we’d go out to lunch and talk about the bee,” she said. “We made a day of it.”
Last year, Pasquale told her dad that volunteering at the bee is something she’d like to do, too.
“He said, ‘You should,’” she said.
After Rozzo’s death, Pasquale called Nena Perkins, community events manager at The Vindicator, offering to help.
Perkins was thrilled and signed Pasquale up as a checker.
Pasquale doesn’t know the origin of her dad’s volunteering at the event, but it became so ingrained that it played a part in Pasquale and her siblings planning their parents’ 25th wedding anniversary.
“We planned the party the day of the spelling bee because we knew daddy wouldn’t be here,” she said.
The siblings told their mother that she couldn’t be at the house because something was being delivered for their anniversary. Rozzo dropped his wife off at his mother’s house that morning, returning to the home that afternoon with his wife and mother, expecting a family dinner.
They returned to a house full of family and friends gathered to celebrate the silver anniversary of their union.
Pasquale acknowledges she’ll likely get emotional Saturday, particularly when Perkins speaks of Rozzo in her opening remarks. But she believes he would be both happy and proud that she’s continuing the tradition.
“Everything Dad did, he gave it 100 percent: the spelling bee, as a principal, a teacher and with his family,” Pasquale said. He was a teacher at the former St. Edward’s School in Youngstown and principal at St. Joseph/Immaculate Heart of Mary in Austintown.
She and her three siblings have tried to follow his example.
“I think he knows that I’m doing this for him, in his memory, and I think it would make him proud,” Pasquale said.
Saturday’s bee includes 50 students with 37 of them making their spelling debuts; 11 spellers are competing for the second time and two spellers, Angela McKenna, a seventh-grader at Girard Junior High School, and Samuel Johnson, a fifth-grader who is home schooled, are competing for the third time.
There is no returning champion this year. The 2015 grand champion and runner-up aged out of the bee.
Ryan Staton, an eighth-grader at Jackson-Milton Middle School, earned third-place last year and will return Saturday.
Each contestant received a Merriam-Webster 11th Edition Collegiate dictionary, courtesy of The Vindicator and a Vindicator Spelling Bee T-shirt, a school champion certificate and other mementos for their participation in the bee.
Saturday’s grand champion will represent the region in the 89th Scripps National Spelling Bee during the week of May 22 in Washington, D.C.
The newspaper will pay for transportation, hotel accommodations and other expenses for the grand champion and an adult escort.
Fred Owens, a professor in YSU’s communication and theatre department, will return Saturday as the bee pronouncer. The Rev. Lewis Macklin Jr., pastor of Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church; Mary Kay Earnhart, a retired teacher; and Carol Ryan, office manager at St. Christine Parish are the judges.
Pasquale, a seventh-and eighth-grade teacher at St. Charles School, won’t be the only Rozzo family member at Saturday’s bee.
Her youngest sister, Alaina Chepke, will accompany her, sitting in the front row like Pasquale did while their dad performed his bee duties.
“And she wants to go to lunch afterwards,” Pasquale said. She’s not sure she’ll meet her dad’s bee tenure, but she expects to continue the tradition long-term.
“I plan to do it for as long as I can,” Pasquale said.