The Famous New Yorker Wax Museum

The fourth graders at Aidan's elementary school present a famous New Yorker "wax museum" each year as part of their history studies. Each student is assigned a person, researches that person, writes a short bio and then portrays that person in a presentation to their fellow students, friends and families. Aidan's class portrayed people from government and local history, another class portrayed people who changed history and the final class portrayed assorted famous (and presumably infamous) people.

Aidan was assigned the role of DeWitt Clinton - you know him, right? When Aidan started to tell me about him, I realized that I did know one fact about him, that he was one of the main forces behind the creation of the Erie Canal and the first version of the canal was often called "Clinton's Ditch". He was also governor of New York, a U.S. Senator and the mayor of New York City.

We had to provide Aidan with a costume or props for his presentation. Since I am not an expert in historical clothing nor am I a seamstress, we decided to work off the Clinton's Ditch portion of the bio and outfit Aidan with a shovel. We also pinned a "I LOVE NY" button on his shirt, since Clinton had served our state well in his lifetime.

Last Thursday afternoon the wax museum opened. Aidan and his classmates were arranged around the classroom with red circles in front of them, which were pretend buttons that the viewers could press to bring the character to life. Aidan did a marvelous job of remembering his lines and delivering them in a clear voice:

I also viewed our neighbor, Bailey, as Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and heard the bios of Mayor Bloomberg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Then I popped next door to see some of Aidan's Cub Scout friends. Most of the students did an excellent job of remembering their lines and I learned a bit more about some of the interesting people in our state's history. It was a better experience, I am sure, than going to the wax museum in Lake George.