Ginger Hurajt and her husband, George Medelinskas, pose at Kinkaku-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, while on vacation in 2020. Hurajt was the 1975 Vindicator Regional Spelling Bee champion.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of Saturday profiles of area residents and their stories. To suggest a profile, contact features editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday.com or metro editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com

In 1975, as a 14-year-old eighth-grader at St. Luke School in Boardman, Ginger Hurajt won The Vindicator’s regional spelling bee and represented the Youngstown area in the 48th annual National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

Hurajt — now an English professor at North Essex Community College in Haverhill, Mass. — says those spelling bee experiences 46 years ago helped spark her love of language.

Hurajt’s spelling bee journey began in 1975 when she defeated young spelling champs from 135 other public and parochial schools throughout Mahoning and Trumbull counties in the 42nd annual regional spelling bee sponsored by The Vindicator.

“I remember how my knees were literally knocking when it got down to the last two spellers,” she said. Hurajt’s winning word was “resuscitate.”

As champion, Hurajt received an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for the National Spelling Bee and a slew of other prizes.

“I felt like a queen showered in gifts — a TV, a watch, a dictionary and atlas, season tickets to the (Youngstown) Playhouse and much more,” she said “I had a very modest upbringing, and it felt like 10 Christmases.

“Most importantly,” she said, “The Vindicator bee truly began me on the path of loving words and literature and eventually my earning my degree and starting a teaching career.”

Because of the pandemic, the 2020 Scripps National Spelling Bee was canceled for the first time since World War II (1943-1945). The national contest will return this year with preliminary rounds to held in mid-June and semifinals to be held on June 27, both virtually. A dozen finalists will then gather at Walt Disney World in Florida for the finals, which will be nationally televised on ESPN on July 8.

GREAT MEMORIES OF OHIO

Hurajt was born and raised in Youngstown, and she lived there until she was 24. Her father, Steve Hurajt, was an electrical lineman in the Brier Hill Works of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. and her mother, Marilyn Hurajt, was a bank teller. Although her parents have passed away, her brothers, Stephen and Vern, and some extended family still live in the area.

Hurajt earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Youngstown State University and then went to the University of East Anglia in England to complete her master’s degree in the 19th-and 20th-century English and American novels.

Although she’s lived in Boston since returning from England, Hurajt gets back to Ohio periodically.

“Whenever I return, besides seeing family and old friends, my favorite things to do are to visit Mill Creek Park and eat the foods I grew up with and miss: Carchedi’s wedding soup, La Villa (Sports Bar and Grille) greens pizza, Gorant chocolates, White House Fruit Farm doughuts!”

THEN AND NOW

The National Spelling Bee has changed a lot since Hurajt competed.

In 2019, the last time the national competition was held, 562 fifth- through eighth-grade champions gathered at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, for a week in May. After a series of written and oral competitions, the ESPN-televised finals ended in an eight-way tie with each “octo-champ” winning $50,000 and numerous prizes.

By contrast, Hurajt was one of only 79 contestants in the 1975 National Spelling Bee, which was held at the historic Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. The traditional oral spelling bee lasted two days and was sandwiched into a week of sightseeing and parties for the spellers and their families. The 1975 winner, Hugh Tosteson Garcia of Puerto Rico, received $1,000, a trophy, a school plaque and a ruby-and-gold pin.

While it’s become increasingly common for National Spelling Bee contestants to hire professional coaches, Hurajt and many others in 1975 relied on parents and teachers to quiz them from the official practice book, “Words of the Champions.”

“I used to get out of my reading class and maybe another class to practice spelling with Sister Miriam,” Hurajt said. “Sister Miriam would give me orange juice and butter mints. She was pretty invested in the spelling bee and had had several other students go to Washington.”

Although she’d mentored prior competitors, Sister Miriam made her first trip to Washington, D.C., to watch Hurajt compete in the National Spelling Bee.

COMPETITION BEGINS

On Wednesday of bee week in Washington, D.C., Hurajt and the other 78 young spellers assembled on the stage in the Mayflower Hotel’s grand ballroom to compete. The room was filled with parents, teachers, reporters and photographers.

As speller No. 27, Hurajt made it through the first five rounds, correctly spelling “hypsography” (the science of mapping areas to show heights), “baleful” (menacing), “olfactory” (relating to the sense of smell), “germicidal” (destroying germs), and “diluvial” (brought on by a flood).

Then, in the sixth round, she got the word “parse,” which means to analyze a sentence.

She debated and then spelled: “p-a-r-c-e.”

“I had never heard it before. I was thinking about “parcel” and “parsley,” and I went with the ‘C,'” she recalled.

She left the stage and got a consoling hug from her dad. She had placed 41st,earning $50 in prize money.

“I had learned so many multi-syllable words, and this was the one I missed,” she said.

“I felt devastated, especially for disappointing Sister Miriam.”

The nun had been watching from a seat near the back of the room, carefully writing down each word given and taking notes about how the national bee worked.

“Sister Miriam just smiled,” Hurajt recalled. The nun said, “You did very well. After all, you knew how to spell ‘hypsography.'”

That moment stuck with Hurajt: “The intense studying and grace in losing were both good lessons.”

LASTING LESSSONS

Hurajt said participating in the National Spelling Bee was a grand adventure.

“It was my first trip in an airplane. It was also my first trip to Washington, D.C.,” she said.

“The Mayflower Hotel was also a fancy hotel to me. And I remember how nice all of the kids were.”

Hurajt, along with the other spellers and their families, visited the city’s memorials and Capitol Hill. They toured George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon, Va., and cruised on the Potomac River. After a VIP tour of the White House, First Lady Betty Ford greeted them from a balcony overlooking the Rose Garden.

Another special part of the 1975 contest: Will Geer, who played Grandpa Walton on the popular 1970s TV show, “The Waltons,” was there to film a TV special about the National Spelling Bee. He accompanied the spellers on sightseeing trips and attended other bee events.

Looking back, Hurajt said she thinks the National Spelling Bee helped set her on the course of her career.She teaches the graphic novel, poetry writing, literature and composition to college students.

“I became an English teacher, so it definitely had a lifelong impact on my love of words and literature,” she said.

Hurajt and her husband, George Medelinskas, live in Haverhill, Mass. When she’s not teaching or reading, Hurajt loves to kayak and travel, and the couple has made recent trips to Cornwall, England, Iceland and Japan.

Blakely, of Maryville, Tenn., was a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Centralia, Ill., when she represented the St. Louis Globe Democrat in the 1975 National Spelling Bee. For the past year, she has been finding and interviewing her fellow contestants. Blakely’s stories about 1975 contestants have been running in newspapers and magazines around the country. Blakely recently retired after 14 years with the public relations office at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Before that, she worked as newspaper reporter in Illinois; a city editor in Corvallis, Oregon; and a bureau chief at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.