Living History Day Scheduled For Lighthouse Point

Colonial-era games like Tip-Cat, Fox and Geese, and Rounders - possibly the precursor to modern American baseball - will come back to life May 20 at Lighthouse Point.

Living History Day is the culmination of a year-long project for fourth- and seventh-grade special education students from Heuvelton, Ogdensburg and Madrid-Waddington school districts who studied Fort La Presentation and the French and Indian War.

Michael J. Whitaker, of Bishops Mills, Ontario, is one of about a dozen of presenters for the day, and will lead children through a modified game of Rounders - participants will be using baseball bats and softballs instead of sticks and stones, as were used by children in the old days.

"We're trying to show the young people that although there has been change over time, many things are still the same," Mr. Whitaker said. "It's one of those things that is getting shuffled lower and lower in school curriculums, but history doesn't have to be boring."

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If it's related to where students live and what they do, he said, history can still be interesting.

"History happened right here along the St. Lawrence River in Ogdensburg," he said. "Living History Day gives students the opportunity to actually live history."

Barbara J. O'Keefe, president of Fort La Presentation Association, said this is the idea behind the day's activity.

"Students will be thrust back in time," Mrs. O'Keefe said of the second annual event, running from 9:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. "The excitement we see is wonderful. We want to make more of an impression within our local schools. We're using our past for our future."

While Rounders will be the subject of Mr. Whitaker's 20-minute presentation for the approximately 275 students attending, the day will be much more than just fun and games, said Julie M. Madlin, Fort La Présentation Education Committee chair and a special education teacher at Heuvelton Central School.

"Eighteenth century reenactors and heritage interpreters will demonstrate many activities, including open hearth cooking, life in the navy and army, colonial clothing, and the art of the tinsmith and blacksmith," she said. "They will experience the life and color of America's history that happened in their own backyard," Mrs. Madlin said.

Other activities include a children's muster, rope making, tent set-up and take down and camp life, toys, mapmaking, artillery displays and demonstrations, music and fur trading.

The event is supported by the St. Lawrence-Lewis Board of Cooperative Educational Services, several local school districts and Heuvelton parent-teacher association, and local Lions Clubs.