Topeka students have historical wins

Seaman student awarded $60,000 scholarship

Two Topeka Collegiate scholars were the top Kansas winners at Thursday's National History Day awards ceremony honoring 1,200 students who competed in the four-day event at the University of Maryland.

Anna Hamilton and Sjobor Hammer, who will be eighth-graders in the fall, were awarded a silver medal for their video documentary "Walking the Path of Duty: William Allen White and the Ku Klux Klan." The 10-minute documentary was selected from among 100 state entries in the junior documentary category.

The film outlines the late Kansas journalist's battle to discredit the KKK in Kansas during the 1920s.

"White really stood up to the Klan, and that's what we tried to show in our documentary," said Hamilton, 13. "That's an important message that we wanted to get across -- to stand up for what you believe in."

This year's unofficial National History Day grand prize -- a full-ride, $60,000 scholarship to Ohio's Case Western University -- went to another Topekan, Elaina Murray, who will be a senior next year at Seaman High School.

Murray finished 12th at the national competition for her senior division research paper, "Antiheroic Antinovel: Catch-22 and its Influence on the Perception of Modern War."

The Case Western scholarship normally is awarded to one of the top three medalists in senior division categories, said Kansas State Historical Society spokeswoman Bobbie Athon.

Murray's award surprised many of the attendees at a morning awards ceremony -- most notably the Kansas recipient herself, who had left for the airport and a return flight to Kansas before the announcement.

However, Athon said Murray was intercepted by telephone before boarding the flight and returned to the University of Maryland's Cole Field House with Seaman history teacher Susan Sittenauer as the ceremony ended.

Seaman principal Ron Vinduska said school officials learned of the scholarship after receiving a phone call from Sittenauer late Thursday morning.

"I think it would be comparable to a student getting accepted to the Naval Academy," he said, "only Elaina gets the good news a year early, just before her senior year has started."

Topekan Robert Hamilton, brother of silver medalist Anna Hamilton, finished 14th in the junior individual performance category for his portrayal of the late Kansas public health pioneer Dr. Samuel J. Crumbine. Crumbine originated a "Don't Spit on the Sidewalk" public health campaign in 1910.

Hamilton, 14, graduated from the eighth grade at Topeka Collegiate in May and will attend Topeka High School in the fall.

While competing at National History Day, Hamilton also had been invited to perform Wednesday at the National Musem of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Center, in nearby Washington, D.C.

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