She Stays C-o-o-l and Spells S-w-e-l-t-e-r to Open Bee

-Denise DeCamp spelled it out for the judges: s-w-e-l-t-e-r. With that correct answer, the 11-year-old from Van Buren, Ind., opened the competition at the National Spelling Bee in Washington. Lori Mullins, 14, of Woodbridge, Va., was the first to ring the ejection bell when she misspelled “germproof” by beginning the word with a “j,” even though she immediately corrected her mistake. This year’s field of contestants, culled from an estimated 8 million to 9 million youngsters who participated in local competitions, includes 92 boys and 93 girls, sponsored by 182 newspapers. The champion speller in the two-day contest will receive $1,500 plus other prizes.

--Ruth Bonner, 86, the mother-in-law of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Andrei Sakharov, bade goodby in Boston to “this wonderful country” for a return to the Soviet Union to live again with her daughter and the freed Soviet dissident. Appearing frail at a news conference, Bonner spoke softly in Russian translated by her granddaughter, Tatiana Yankelevich of Newton, Mass., who is accompanying her to Moscow. Speaking of her life in the United States, Bonner said: “I was comfortable. I was surrounded not only with the attention and love of my close relatives, but also with the same love and attention from many other people.” In 1980, when she visited her granddaughter, Bonner had intended a quick return to Moscow to be with pediatrician daughter Yelena Bonner and Sakharov. But Sakharov was imprisoned that year for dissident activities and was exiled to the closed city of Gorky. Yelena Bonner was tried for dissident activities and sentenced to Gorky in 1984. The couple were released just before Christmas, 1986, and returned to Moscow.

--From now on, people in Gilmore, Ark., will know exactly where they are. And no longer will someone have to meet an emergency vehicle at the railroad tracks and guide it to the right house. Gilmore is getting street signs after an old-fashioned fund-raiser featuring softball, bobbing for apples and a pet show raised $1,037.41. But that’s only the first step for the town of 503, Mayor Christene Brownlee said. Gilmore also needs a sewer system, better streets and an improved fire department. The town plans to ask the government for help, but the mayor felt residents should prove something first. “We are a small community and we want to do something for ourselves,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to do something for somebody who was always asking and never got up to do anything for themselves, would you?”