| 4/28/2005 3:00:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Hope Harvey |
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Hope Harvey wins contest with
recitation of Hawthorne story
Wayne Engle
Courier Staff Writer
Hope Harvey won the 94th annual Custer Contest at Madison Consolidated High School last night, reciting a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story about a group of old people who became suddenly and briefly young again.
Harvey is the daughter of John and Mary Harvey.
“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” was illustrated by Harvey not only with words but with smooth and practiced body language that took her from one side of the stage to the other. Her delivery was polished and convincing, especially when she delivered lines spoken by the various characters.
Kevin Brittain was chosen as runner-up in the contest. The son of Phil and Janice Brittain, he brought many laughs from the audience with his rendition of Joel Chandler Harris’ well-known “Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby.”
The other three contestants, all of whom earned equal status, were Matt Angel, son of Jan Angel and Clyde Angel; Emily Kelley, daughter of Bernard and Susan Kelley; and Adair Staicer, daughter of John and Maureen Staicer.
The Custer Contest invites five MCHS students who rank at the top in the senior class academically to participate.
After the winners were announced, Hope Harvey said she was “very surprised to win. Everyone was so amazing.”
“This is the first time I’ve ever done (a stage performance),” Harvey said. “None of us are really performers.”
She said her English teacher gave her several selections to choose from for her presentation, “and ‘Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment’ was one of my favorites.”
Harvey said she hasn’t decided where she will attend college, but has narrowed her choices to Bates College in Maine or Carleton College in Minnesota.
Angel, who gave his recital first, told the audience about “The Laughing Man,” a fictitious character that J.D. Salinger heard about from a young mentor of his group of little boys in New York City around 1928. Angel’s animated storytelling and body language lent a personality to the story.
Kelley’s choice was “An Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance,” a tongue-in-cheek Mark Twain story. Twain told of a ducal family that schemed to inherit the dukedom away from their relatives, only to have the scheme come a cropper at the last minute. Kelley drew laughs from the audience when she recited the last words of the story — that Twain had given up on trying to decide on a proper ending for the complicated tale, and would leave it to his readers’ imagination to settle it.
Staicer recited one of the best-known and most popular short stories in the English language — “The Ransom of Red Chief,” by O. Henry. Although many of her adult audience no doubt recalled the story from their high school literature classes, she reinvigorated it with her droll impersonations of two rural drifters who try to make $2,000 by kidnapping a 10-year-old boy described as “40 pounds of wildcat” and holding him for ransom, but instead wind up having to pay his father to take him back.
MCHS principal Jeff Dhonau, the master of ceremonies, told the audience how the Custer Contest began in 1912 through the philanthropy of A.S. Custer, a Monroe Township native and one-time teacher who left Jefferson County to make his fortune in Cincinnati. He established an endowment to finance the contest at Madison High School (now Madison Consolidated) in imitation of Wabash College’s “Baldwin Prize.” Contestants must attend MCHS all four years and must rank in the top five of their class.
During the judges’ deliberations after all five students had made their presentations, music was performed by a quartet of LeeAnn Dunker, Katie Geglein, Mindy Jungkurth and Jordan Wilkerson.
Harvey received $700 as her first prize. Brittain’s second-place award was $350; and the other three contestants each received $175.
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