At 84, William Cashore still remembers both the word that knocked the runner-up out and the one he spelled correctly to win.
William Cashore, 84, smiles as he looks at his 1954 Scripps National Spelling Bee championship trophy, Wednesday, 29 May, 2024 in Greenwich, Rhode Island. As a 14-years-old Cashore correctly spelled the final two words of the contest, uncinated and transept, in 1954. EAST GREENWICH, R.I. — In medical school and throughout his career as a neonatologist, William Cashore often was asked to proofread others’ work. Little did they know he was a spelling champion, with a trophy at home to prove it.
“It was, at the time, one of the greatest events of my life,” he said in an interview at his Rhode Island home. “It’s still something that I remember fondly.” When the field narrowed to two competitors, the other boy misspelled “uncinated,” which means bent like a hook. Cashore spelled it correctly, then clinched the title with the word “transept,” an architectural term for the transverse part of a cross-shaped church.
“It gave me much more self-confidence and also gave me a sense that it’s very important to try to get things as correct as possible,” he said. “I’ve always been that way, and I still feel that way. If people are careless about spelling and writing, you wonder if they’re careless about their thinking.”
Babbel, which offers foreign language instruction via its app and live online courses, tracked Cashore down ahead of this year’s spelling bee because it was interested in whether he had learned other languages before his big win. He hadn’t, other than picking up a few words from Pennsylvania Dutch, but told the company that he believes learning another language “gives you a perspective on your own language and insights into the thinking and processes of the other language and culture.
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