Carthage’s Eric Peer has done it again.
A few months ago he nabbed a first place award in the junior individual exhibit for National History Day. He won it thanks to his detailed exhibit named “Julia Lathrop and Better Babies.”
Peer, who his home schooled by his mother, Julie, was one of 55 from the Show-Me State competing in the 2009 Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest, which was held earlier this month in Maryland. In all, Peer competed against 2,400 students nationwide.
Peer took seventh in the nation in the Junior Individual Exhibit category for his Julia Lathrop and Better Babies entry. He also was honored with the Outstanding Entry for Missouri in the junior division.
Brittany Golden and Andrew Schesser, both of Carthage High School, placed 14th in the nation in the Senior Group Performance category for their project, The Actions of Annie White Baxter: A Lasting Legacy for Women’s Suffrage. Kathleen Swift was their teacher.
Peer, son of Allen and Julie Peer of Carthage, was the first home schooler from Carthage to reach this coveted national level.
Eric’s winning exhibit — built exactly like something one would view inside an upscale museum — centers on the life and achievements of Julia Lathrop, often nicknamed “America’s First Official Mother” for her devoted work in bettering the conditions for the often-neglected members of society: children, the mentally challenged and the disabled. Her work reaped significant improvement in poverty and childcare reforms in the United States and abroad during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1912, she was appointed chief of the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor, the first woman to be made bureau chief in U.S. history.
“It took me a couple of months to build it and longer (to research) and” make it presentable, Eric said recently. This was Eric’s first attempt at a History Day display. It was a good first attempt — the judges were blown away by it. Eric spent months researching the material, gathering pictures and quotes and newspaper articles, cutting it out, copying, pasting and piecing it all together. The exhibit even rotates so each side of the display can be made visible.
Peer’s exhibit is now on display at the Powers Museum and will be there throughout the summer.
