Seven freshmen from Toll Gate High School are looking to raise $7,000 to represent the school and the state in the National History Day contest.

The competition, held on the campus of the University of Maryland just outside of Washington, D.C. from June 9-13, will include presentations and awards for participating history students from all 50 states, according to history teacher Michael Sollitto.

This year’s competition revolves around the theme “Turning Points in History,” which requires students to examine how certain events or inventions led to societal change throughout history.

The annual project, Sollitto said, has always been one of his favorites.

“Really, I think it’s one of the best projects, but also a very long project,” Sollitto said. “And for this group, it keeps going on, which is great.”

In total, the seven students produced five award-winning projects, with three of the projects being individual and the other two created by groups of two. In total, state 32 projects qualified for the competition.

Mother of pandemics

For some topics- including Savannah Lozowski, whose project is entitled “The Mother of Pandemics”- the inspiration came from her interest in the medical field.

 “I’ve always been interested in medical topics, so I wanted to do a deep dive on the significant ones that have happened,” Lozowski said. “I’ve been really interested in the Spanish flu, because that related a lot to COVID, which we all just went through.”

Kyleigh LeTellier and Isabella Alves’ project also was inspired by living through the COVID-19 pandemic. Living through it inspired them to look back at past vaccination campaigns, and how they laid the groundwork for dealing with future pandemics and epidemics.

As such, they looked at how the polio vaccine changed society and nearly eradicated the disease, and how its rollout helped save lives not just from polio, but from future diseases.

“The creation of the polio vaccine helped us with vaccines today and widened our knowledge about vaccines and mass distribution,” LeTellier said. “Now, with COVID, we knew a specific process to go by, which polio helped develop.”

Anna O’Donnell’s interest in engineering and technology took her in a different direction- examining the history of the steam engine and how it helped industrialize the world.

What stood out to her most throughout her research was the human element of heavy machinery.

“It seems like a boring topic for anyone who’s not interested in engineering, from their perspective,” O’Donnell said. “But it’s about the people whose lives were touched by this, because in agriculture, you saw a shift, the people who were living in cities, you saw a shift. It’s one small machine, but it had the power to change so many different people’s lives.”

Avery Roy, meanwhile, based her project on a misconception that she said had persisted since the late 1930s- the impact of the 1938 radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds.”

“People nowadays think it caused some mass panic, but it really didn’t,” Roy said. “My topic is a turning point, but it shouldn’t be, because it’s based on complete fiction.”

As an eighth-grader at Winman Middle School, Roy had been recognized by the Rhode Island Historical Society for another project involving media history, entitled “From the World War to the World Screen:  How WWI Shaped the Horror Industry.”

Images of the Great Depression

For Morgan Cook and Charlotte DeGaetano, looking at the artwork of Dorothea Lange- a photographer famous for capturing images of the Great Depression through the lens of ordinary people suffering through it- had inspired them to do their project on her.

“We wanted to explain how she brought light to the fact that people were struggling in the Great Depression, and how there needed to be a change,” DeGaetano said. “Her photos really helped, and we wanted to explain her photojournalism.”

The two of them have also received an additional honor. Their work- officially entitled “Through the Lens of Hardship: Dorothea Lange’s Portraits of the Great Depression”- will be on display at the Smithsonian during the contest, alongside one piece of work from each state.

When she first heard her work had been chosen, Cook said that her first reaction wasn’t excitement, but rather fear.

“When I first got the email, I was in school, and didn’t know what it was at first,” Cook said. “Hearing more about it and the honor, I feel that it got me more nervous, having to go there with all these different projects from different states.”

Still, she and DeGaetano both said it was an incredible honor to be chosen.

Roy’s project also earned her an invitation to meet with Senator Jack Reed in Washington, though she said she turned him down due to time constraints.

Sollitto, who has Alves, LeTellier, Cook and DeGaetano in his class, said that being able to help his students reach this point and seeing their projects develop has been a wonderful experience.

“It’s really all their hard work,” Sollitto said. “I’m very happy for them and there to kind of guide them a little bit, but this is all on them. Their projects were phenomenal- beautifully designed, very well researched- they did a fantastic job.”

Currently, $1,340 has been raised to help the students pay for the trip. Sollitto said that he would like to see that number at least doubled to reduce financial pressure on the students’ families, who will be on the hook for costs such as hotels.

Making it to the national competition and getting to experience everything that Washington has to offer, the students agreed, would mean a lot to them.

“More than just the competition itself, D.C. has a lot about the nation’s history as a whole to offer, from museums to visiting national monuments,” Roy said. “I don’t think you can get that anywhere else.”

To donate to help the Toll Gate students get to the National History Day competition, visit  https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-toll-gate-students-journey-to-nationals?member=34216351&sharetype=teams&utm_campaign=p_na+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer.