Appleton’s latest spelling bee champion is about as far from a student as can be
APPLETON, Wis. (WFRV) – Notepad in front of her, pen in hand, Janell Keuler patiently waited for the next word to be called.
“Not really nervous,” she said.
It was her first spelling bee in more than seven decades.
“I think it goes back to my grade school phonics days,” Keuler said. “I think about fifth grade, I won that, but since then, no.”
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Keuler was participating in Primrose Retirement Community’s first-ever national spelling bee among all 33 locations across the country. It began as a competition at each individual location and progressed to the national level, with Keuler representing the Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana regions.
“We have over 30 locations, different Primroses all over, so we’ve been having a biweekly spelling bee since February, narrowing it down,” Primrose Retirement Community Appleton life enrichment coordinator Keisha Vergenz said. “Every time I visited [Keuler] she was studying, so she was on her A-game ready to go.”
Residents and employees packed into the community’s theater to watch Keuler compete against the other regional winners on a Zoom call.
“Everyone came out to root for her,” Vergenz said. “Janelle’s fabulous, we love her. I told her I want to be her when I grow up, and I know some of our staff told her, ‘Janelle, you’re our hero.’”
The hero had her whole community behind her, and no one more so than her friend Rosemary Adler, whom Kueler beat in an earlier round. Adler then decided to offer to help Kueler prepare.
“I just offered to see if she would like my help, and she said, ‘Oh sure, when would you be available?’ I said, ‘Today!’” Adler said. “She gave me the list, and it was pages and pages.”
Behemoth, kookaburra, berimbau, peccadillo, opprobrium, phillumenist, zaibatsu, oeuvre, and neurohypothesis were all words that Keuler had to spell.
“Irrefragable. What the word means I don’t know,” she said. “Some of these words you pronounce different than how I thought they were going to be pronounced.”
For as much fun as Keuler had participating in the spelling bee, the former high school teacher in Chilton and Plymouth prefers a number line to an alphabet.
“I was a teacher but I taught math,” she said. “Algebra, trig, geometry.”
The winner of the tournament received no prize besides a trophy and bragging rights, and that is more than enough for Keuler.
“It would just be good to represent this community,” she said. “Lot of good people.”
After 12 words and an hour and a half of battle, Keuler was knocked out of the spelling bee in third place with the word logorrhea, essentially nonstop talking. Even though she spelled it correctly on the sheet, officials say she spelled it wrong out loud, replacing the second “o” with a “u.”
“That’s ok,” she said.
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Her friends were right there for her.
“I’m sorry she didn’t come in first. But as far as we’re concerned, she was first,” Adler said. “And I thought ‘this is never going to end, because these ladies are so smart.’”
“The people here, it’s amazing,” Keuler said of her crowd. Even though she’s “not much of a celebrator” Keuler looked forward to dinner and getting to “stop looking at these words.”
Although, she plans on returning next year with a first-place showing.
