Eight Topekans reach final round

Eight Topeka students have advanced to the championship round of the National History Day competition at the University of Maryland's Cole Field House, where winners will be announced beginning at 7:30 a.m. today.

Robert Hamilton, 14, is a finalist for the top prize in the junior dramatic performance category, which requires entrants to present a first-person characterization of an influential American.

Hamilton, who completed eighth grade last month at Topeka Collegiate School, performed as Dr. Samuel J. Crumbine, a former secretary of the Kansas State Board of Health who in 1910 sponsored the "Don't Spit on the Sidewalk" public health campaign.

Hamilton's sister, Anna Hamilton, also advanced to the elite group of 14 finalists in the junior video documentary category, along with co-producer Sjobor Hammer. Both girls will be eighth-graders at Topeka Collegiate.

The Hammer-Hamilton documentary focused on Kansas journalist William Allen White's battle to discredit the Ku Klux Klan in Kansas in the 1920s.

Sylvia Hamilton, mother of the Hamilton family's finalists, characterized her children's showings at National History Day as "absolutely phenomenal."

"From my perspective, they have learned so much about doing research, pulling information together and expressing themselves with judges," she said. "We told our kids going into this that they knew how to tell their stories, and that's exactly what has happened."

Three other Topeka Collegiate students were in the running for first place in the junior exhibit category -- Quentin Checked, David Gas and Daniel Mantel. All will be in the eighth grade this fall.

Seaman High School's Aliena Murray was named a finalist in the senior theme paper competition. Murray will be a senior.

Jackson Steiner, who will be a seventh-grader at Christ the King School, got the judges' nod as a finalist in the junior theme paper division.

Today's National History Day awards ceremony will be shown on an Internet webcast at www.historychannel.com.

The state's 53 National History Day competitors advanced to the University of Maryland preliminary competition by finishing in first or second place at the Kansas History Day event, which is administered by the Kansas State Historical Society in conjunction with the Eisenhower Foundation in Abilene.

Robert Hamilton presented his performance as Crumbine on Wednesday to an exhibition audience at the National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Center, Washington D.C.

Also Wednesday, Hamilton donated one of his performance props to the museum, a sidewalk paving brick imprinted with Crumbine's anti-spitting slogan.

Matt Moline can be reached at matthew.moline@cjonline.com.