Gil Truitt
Dear Editor: Mr. Gil Truitt was a good and honorable man. His passing was a loss for all of us.
Florian Sever, Sitka
Adult Spelling Bee
Dear Editor: The 2021 Friends of the Library Adult Spelling Bee was a smashing success! All of the money raised will go to support Sitka Public Library, and we had a blast doing it. Our winning team was Amy Li and Peter Heckendorn, with Susan Brandt-Ferguson and Harvey Brandt a close second, and Betty Richter and Jennifer Davis rounding out the top three.
We would like to thank everyone who helped make the Bee possible. Thanks to Rob Woolsey for being our Host Emeritus; Brenda Campen and Mary Stensvold, who were our spellcheckers and judges; Don Muller for keeping time; Dan Etulain for filming; and Leah Mason for keeping track of lifelines.
A giant thank you to the wonderful staff at Harrigan Centennial Hall for all of their help setting up the stage, microphones, and technology so we were able to pull this event off while following COVID guidelines – we couldn’t have done it without them. Thanks to Kari Sagel and Paul Norwood for coming up with our word list and creating sentences.
And, of course, thank you to all of our sponsors: Sitka Tribe of Alaska, the Duck Father of the Rotary Duck Race, Christine Harrington CPA Services, Precision Boat Works, Venneberg Insurance, Sitka Checkered Tours, Old Harbor Books, Cindy Westergaard and Neurobehavioral Consultants LLC, Hames Corporation, the Sitka Soup, Sitka Rotary Club, Foreign Automotive, Harry Race Pharmacy, First National Bank of Anchorage, Taxi Bumz, Alaska Computer and Office Supply Center/Radioshack, the Daily Sitka Sentinel, and Sitka Education Association.
And finally, thank you to our participants and Zoom audience members for being there with us. We hope to see you all at next year’s Bee!
Margot O’Connell,
Sitka Public Library
