Published: October 11, 2008 09:30 pm      

Constitution Bowl

MOOREFIELD — An overflow crowd of students, staff, family and friends listened intently at a Constitution and Citizenship Day commemoration on Sept. 17, in an air-conditioned Moorefield college classroom where the air hung not so hot and heavy as in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall 221 years ago.

“But the human spirits flowed equally energetically,” said Dave Jones, the student services counselor at Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College, who organized the fourth annual Constitution Bowl event.

Triumphant applause rang through the room as three student-teams chalked up dozens of correct answers during the hour-long contest moderated by that great American founding father, Benjamin Franklin.

Resplendent in a white, lace-jabot shirtfront, a blue waistcoat and cuffed, red pantaloons, and drawing on his personal and intimate knowledge of the Constitution, Franklin pitched question after question to the students, focusing on names, dates, facts and figures important to the nation’s founding document.

Minutes before he vanished into the historical vapor from which he had emerged, Franklin noted, “All three Eastern teams answered almost every question correctly, which is much better than in past years, and a very good thing. For without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”

“They Studied”

The “Reformers,’’ a four-member team led by Trinity Racey — an Early Childhood Development major now in her final semester at Eastern — claimed the winners’ prize, although “Jefferson’s Disciples’’ and “Franklin’s Fanatics’’ finished just points behind them.

“One thing’s for sure — they studied,” said Terry Hulver, a retired East Hardy High School social studies teacher who served on the three-judge panel that scored the event.

In the days leading up to the contest, Racey and her teammates — Sheila Felda-Ullery, Matthew Berg and Brian Ours, all students in the Adult Basic Education program housed at the college — used Internet resources, classroom lessons and activities, and group drills to deepen their knowledge and appreciation of the Constitution. The other teams also used textbooks and Internet sites — such as MyConstituion.com and ConstitutionFacts.com — to prepare for the match. And in doing so, they all fulfilled the exact purpose of West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd’s legislation that established Constitution and Citizenship Day as a national observance four years ago.

“Each and every American needs to better comprehend the genius of this extraordinary” constitution, Byrd said in a column last month, urging his fellow citizens to use the occasion “to read, analyze and reflect on” this “learned and dynamic document” that “protects our individual liberties.”

Details and Debate

Ben Franklin agreed. “The only thing more expensive than education,” he warned, is ignorance.”

During Eastern’s Constitution Bowl, several questions sparked discussion among the contestants and the judges, and highlighted little-known details of the Constitution, including an interesting local connection.

About mid-way through the match, judges Hulver, Daniel Simmons (a counselor at Moorefield High school) and Judy Ball (a local State Farm Insurance representative) debated whether the U. S. Constitution is “the oldest and the shortest” of the written constitutions, or “the most historical and the shortest.” Because so many nations later modeled their own constitutions on the American document, as Simmons pointed out, the judges decided to accept both answers.

At one point, moderator Franklin asked the team bearing his name to identify the branch of government whose role and power it is to interpret the law. The judicial branch, answered the team — but one member cried out, “No!” in protest.

Constitutional Heritage

In his wisdom, Franklin resolved the dispute. “I know it‘s been a little blurry in these recent years,” observed that great American inventor, diplomat and patriot, “but yes, it’s the judicial branch that gets to interpret the law.”

Later, many present at the event learned for the first time that an individual connected to Eastern descends from a forebear who signed both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The kinship lineage of George Clymer — a Pennsylvania delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a member of the nation’s first elected House of Representatives, first president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and a former vice-president of the Philadelphia Agricultural Society — includes Moorefield’s Vera Shockey, the Hardy County ABE Instructor.

“It’s something we’re really proud of,” Shockey said. “Not so much that he’s our cousin, but because of the great work he and the other delegates achieved.”