Jeff Hawkinson, who for 24 years gave his smooth and calming voice to the Journal Star Spelling Bee, died Friday after battling a rare brain disorder for more than a decade.
Hawkinson, 63, died at 9:50 a.m. Friday at his Peoria home surrounded by family, said his wife Cathi Hawkinson.
“He was a class act all the way to the end and he died with dignity,” Cathi Hawkinson said.
Hawkinson had frontotemporal dementia, a rare, untreatable and ultimately fatal syndrome — often mistaken for Alzheimer’s disease — that is caused by damage to the portion of the brain responsible for behavior, emotions and language skills.
The illness gradually took his ability to read, write and speak and eventually his ability to walk or swallow.
Hawkinson became known in the Peoria area as the moderator for the Journal Star Spelling Bee every year for 24 years. The Bee has three segments that are all televised on WEEK-TV on Saturday mornings in March.
He had to give up the Spelling Bee in 2002 when the illness began affecting his speech.
A Bradley University graduate and national speech champion, Hawkinson founded the student television station at Illinois State University, TV-10 when he taught there.
He later was news director at WEEK, then later a spokesman for Caterpillar Inc., including anchoring its in-house television news that is broadcast to Caterpillar facilities around the world.
Hawkinson is donating his brain to Northwestern University for research.
Paul Gordon can be reached at 686-3288 or [email protected]
Read the original article from Journal Star.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services