COSTA MESA : Assignment Lets History Come Alive

Nancy Reagan, Chuck Yeager, Father Junipero Serra and two Yvonne Brathwaite Burkes talked about themselves Wednesday at College Park Elementary School.

The famous people were portrayed by fourth-grade students as part of a history lesson on California.

“I was the one who started the missions in 1769, a long time ago,” said Joseph Arthur, 9, who played Father Serra for the day. Dressed in a brown robe and wearing a wooden cross, Joseph added: “It was hard to make the missions of California, and it was hard to make friends with the Indians, but it was the will of God.”

Joseph and 24 classmates each chose people who they believe made an impact in the state’s history.

Casey Filbey, 9, chose her grandmother, Carma McAffee.

“My grandma has Alzheimer’s (disease) now, but I did some research and found out that she was an artist who drew cartoon animals and pictures for magazine covers,” Casey said.

The class assignment taught Casey about diversity, she said.

“I learned that many people can have different lives and they can make it what they want, and sometimes, unexpectedly, things happen,” said Casey, wearing a faded pink bonnet, knit shawl and mid-19th-Century-style dress.

The lesson, designed by teacher Shirley Shun, got the students interested in learning about people from the past and present who made history.

Not all the people whom the students portrayed could be found in history books though, Shun said. Girls had a hard time finding a famous woman to represent, she said.

But Olga Secgin, 10, and Kelsey Rastorfer, 10, found Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. Olga was the young Burke who worked to unite minorities after the Watts riots and Kelsey was the current Burke, the first black woman ever elected a Los Angeles County supervisor.

Robyn Weber, 10, was former First Lady Nancy Reagan. She talked about her husband, former President Ronald Reagan. “My husband told me he was married before to a woman named Jane and . . . he was in the Air Corps but was rejected from combat because of his poor eyesight,” Robyn told her classmates.

Other girls played the wives of famous men: legendary newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, explorer John C. Fremont and pioneer trader John Sutter. One wore a helmet and said she was Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to fly an aircraft faster than the speed of sound.

“I learned a lot,” said Stephanie Landeros, 10, who portrayed a ranch hand from the early 1900s. “This was a fun assignment that I’ll remember.”