In the halls outside of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, their photos hang high: the Bee champions, stretching back through the decades. One of them is George Thampy, who won back in 2000.
"It felt just euphoric," he recalled.
Thampy still remembers the word that clinched the championship for him.
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"It might as well be tattooed on my hand at this point," he joked. "The word is 'demarche.' It's a diplomatic communique or maneuver."
Someone else who remembers their winning word is Barrie Trinkle.
"Vouchsafe - yes, I do still know how to spell it," she said with a laugh. "It means to 'attest to something.'"
Trinkle can attest to how much the Bee has changed since she won more than 50 years ago, back in 1973.
"I don't know what kind of magic happened to make being academically able be cool," Trinkle said. "It wasn't cool 50 years ago, but boy, it's really cool now. And I just think that's great."
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Sameer Mishra became the Bee champion in 2008, and he also remembers the word that made him a champion.
"I do remember my winning word. That's a hard one to forget. It was guerdon," Mishra said. "A guerdon is a reward, which is a really fitting winning word for a national spelling bee."
He said that his experience at the Bee meant so much to him and his family.
"My parents were immigrants to this country in 1992," Mishra said, "and so, to be able to win a competition that's so linked to that American experience, I think, is kind of an incredible experience."
Together, these three past champions joined others from prior years in a friendly competition this week at the Bee to see if they still had the chops of a spelling champion, all while watching the next generation take the stage.
"It's able to showcase the best of our country," Thampy said.
In the years since they won, Thampy, Trinkle and Mishra have joined the Bee as judges during the competition. They say it is a way to give back to an experience that gave them so much.
Programming note: You can watch the Scripps National Spelling Bee during a live, two-night event, with the semi-finals on May 28 and the finals on May 29. It all starts at 8 p.m. ET, streaming on Scripps News and over-the-air on our sister station, Ion Television.
