GUILDERLAND — They crossed lines through decades and centuries; they crossed ethnic lines and gender lines. But they were all Americans.

Last Thursday, Guilderland High School students in an interdisciplinary course that combines English and United States history portrayed historical figures in a living museum.

The perimeter of the gym was lined with 43 displays that captured moments from the country’s earliest European settlement to its most recent pastimes in sports and music.

Davy Crockett, portrayed by Katie Steinmann, looked over a cardboard parapet, painted to look like stone, through the site of a Kentucky long rifle. Steinmann decided to portray Crockett, she said, because she had heard about his exploits since her youth.
"My dad would play ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett’ when I was little," she said. "I wanted to find out what he was about."

And so she learned the whole story of the frontiersman and politician who died at the siege of the Alamo.

Nearby, Nikki Branchini and Liz Vennard posed as the great Civil War generals at Appomattox Courthouse, where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865.

Grant wore a blue Union cap and a dark mustache and Lee wore a curly white wig and beard. The young women portraying the generals were interested in the period and the moment of history and unperturbed by the gender switch.

The same was true of Josh Kershaw who portrayed Sacagawea, the Shoshone guide and interpreter who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition.
"I’m one quarter Native American," Kershaw said with pride. His grandfather, Paul Bennet, was Abenaki.

Kershaw had on the display table before him family treasures that included a carved mask, a headdress, and a photograph of his grandfather as a soulful young man on a reservation in Canada. He is wearing a feather headdress and many necklaces.

Details mattered. At the end of the first hour-and-a-half session, before the final session began, while the gym was largely empty, Ryan O’Rourke, who was portraying Edgar Allan Poe held a violin. He quickly set it down as a visitor approached, explaining Poe didn’t play; it would be out of character.
He chose to portray Poe, O’Rourke said, because he was "a neat character." O’Rourke’s favorite piece by Poe is his macabre 1845 poem, "The Raven."

Some of the actors worked in pairs. Greg Barcomb and Joe Lima looked at home in their Yankees uniforms, portraying Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. Nearby, Jackie and John F. Kennedy, portrayed by Stephenie Bintz and Michael Corridan, were ready to tell their stories.

Outside of the gym, visitors were challenged with a game of jeopardy.
The familiar Uncle Sam with the starred top hat and stern gaze pointed his forefinger from a student flyer and asked, "Think YOU know American history""