Cedar Rapids sisters both head to National History Day final competition

CEDAR RAPIDS - After she rehearsed a performance for last year's National History Day competition dozens of times, Jessica Cline was sure her little sister also had the performance's script memorized.

The historically accurate, 10-minute skit eventually qualified Jessica for the national competition in Washington, D.C., last year.

'Her attitude never changed - she was so supportive and wanted to see me go to D.C.,” Jessica said of her 11-year-old sister Emily, who tagged along on the trip.

A year later, Jessica has qualified again for the national competition.

But it won't mean just another vacation for Emily - the 11-year-old has qualified for the national competition, too.

'To be able to see her do that, and learn from me, is really cool,” Jessica said.

The sisters, who attend Franklin Middle School in Cedar Rapids, are the only middle-schoolers from Iowa to qualify for the national competition with individual performance pieces.

'I think both of us are happy for each other no matter what the outcome is,” Emily said of the June 11 to 15 finals. 'We've just been supporting each other along this path.”

Students who participate in National History Day - more than 500,000 nationwide, according to the organization - can submit exhibits, papers, documentaries, websites or performances as their projects.

For the Cline sisters, performance was a natural choice. Their mother, Jenny, is a dance teacher and their father, Rob, is the director of communication at University of Iowa's Hancher Auditorium. (He also writes as a freelancer for The Gazette.)

'They have a sense of what it takes to have good stage presence, what sells a moment and what doesn't,” Rob said.

To Deb Siebenga, Jessica and Emily's gifted-education teacher, both students' performances 'truly epitomize performance.”

'They play a musical instrument, both of them dance, they both sing,” Siebenga said. 'It makes it a true performance, I think, when they combine all of those different single performances into one total performance.”

Emily starts her performance in a hat decorated with bananas, strumming a ukulele and singing to a plush monkey - a spoof, she explains, on the lowbrow vaudeville performers of the early 20th century.

Throughout the rest of the performance, which recounts the Actors' Equity Strike of 1919, she takes turns as a vaudevillian, a chorus girl and a dramatic protester.

Jessica, in a piece about artists' anger over much of American indifference toward the AIDS HIV epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, sings Broadway songs, acts out protests and recites harrowing death statistics from the era - all in front of a handmade AIDS memorial quilt.

'They gain so much self-confidence,” Siebenga said of her students who participate in National History Day - about 50 this year, up from just one during Siebenga's first year at Franklin six years ago.

Sixty-six Iowa students qualified for the national competition this year. Students from Corridor schools include:

' Emily Cline, Franklin Middle School, Cedar Rapids - 'Actors Stand for Equity: The Actors' Equity Strike of 1919,” junior individual performance

' Jessica Cline, Franklin Middle School, Cedar Rapids - 'Seasons of Love: Artists Stand Against Indifference to AIDS in America 1982-1996,” junior individual performance

' Carter Fitzgerald, Harding Middle School, Cedar Rapids - 'Black Hawk: Taking a Stand for His Homeland,” junior historical paper

' Abigail Green, Harding Middle School, Cedar Rapids - 'Taking a Stand Against Child Labor: The National Child Labor Committee,” junior individual website

' Elizabeth Low, Oak Ridge Middle School, Linn-Mar - 'William Wilberforce: Voice of the Enslaved,” junior individual exhibit

' Kate Hinz, Oak Ridge Middle School, Linn-Mar - 'Levine v. Johnson County, Iowa: The Fight for the Identity of Carolyn Levine,” junior individual documentary.

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