Ding! Civil War-era history of Scripps National Spelling Bee bell: 'Some of it's a mystery'
Editor's note: This story first published in May 2022 and has been updated with timing of the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.
Ding!
It's the last sound any of the spellers want to hear while onstage at the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals Thursday (8 p.m. ET, ION).
When head judge Mary Brooks presses her right hand on top of her bell, it signals that a speller has made a mistake. The bell, as much as Brooks and her fellow judges, has the final say on the speller's attempt.
In 2015, the bell had a camera dedicated to it on ESPN broadcasts. The bell also has its own story, only partially known, and dates back to the Civil War, says the bell's proud owner.
“It has quite a history," Brooks told USA TODAY Sports, "but some of it’s a mystery.”
In the back of a curio cabinet
It was 1998, and Brooks' mother-in-law, Nellie Johnson Brooks, had recently died. Mary Brooks and her husband, who died eight years ago, were cleaning out her house in New Windsor, Illinois.
All the way in the back of her curio cabinet they discovered an old-fashioned bell.
By that point, Brooks had been a Spelling Bee veteran, having started working for the event at age 18. Her mother-in-law knew this about her, that ringing a bell was a duty she took seriously.
Had it never occurred to Johnson Brooks that her daughter-in-law could find the bell useful? Perhaps she had forgotten it even existed.
“My husband seemed to think it came from the front desk of some hotel, maybe,” Brooks said.
Regardless, Brooks took it, and it's traveled with her to every Bee she's adjudicated since.
Four dates
The bell is brown with an engraved pattern and makes a classic sound. That's all there really is to it.
Except if you hold a magnifying glass to the small circular top.
There, four dates between 1863 and 1874 are visible. Two are in August, one is in February and another is from April.
“So we know that it dates back to the Civil War (era), but beyond that," Brooks said, "I wish I knew the rest of the story behind it.
“What they commemorated or what they were marking, I don’t know. That’s the history part of it that’s so unique.”
From the safe to the stage
A retired teacher, the 2023 Spelling Bee is Brooks' 52nd. She missed the 2014 event because her husband was in hospice care at the time.
They still tuned into the Bee on TV and saw the "cheapy, OfficeMax or whatever it was" bell on the screen.
“There was more feedback on, ‘That’s not the right bell!’ than anything else," Brooks said.
SPORTS NEWSLETTER: Sign up now for daily updates sent to your inbox
Brooks carefully folds bubble wrap around the bell before placing it inside a silk purse to travel from her home in West Des Moines, Iowa, to National Harbor, Maryland, for the Bee.
Other than allowing a documentary crew to film the bell for a few hours recently, the bell doesn't see the light of day – aside from one week each year.
“I keep it in my safe here year-round,” Brooks said.
Follow Chris Bumbaca on Twitter @BOOMbaca.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Spelling Bee 2023: Judge's bell has mysterious Civil War-era history
