When Wilson Middle School in Cedar Rapids put out a request for help in making a centennial celebration display, three Cornell history majors answered the call.
Recent graduates Sara Decker ’25, Erin Fitzgerald ’25, and Jon Viager ’25 all shared an interest in public history, museum studies, and education, making them perfect candidates for the job.
Working as a team, the trio drove to Cedar Rapids every Wednesday afternoon, using their own transportation, for eight months of the 2024–25 academic year, not including block breaks and holidays. They dug through the school’s archival materials, sorted everything, protected items, and created a spreadsheet documenting what they found. Once the collection was organized, they created and installed an exhibit at the school in time for Wilson’s centennial celebration.
“What I enjoyed most about the project was the insight it provided into daily life in the past,” Fitzgerald ’25 said. “The materials in the collection were often very personal, so they provided a perspective not usually available in more formal historical research. It was also really cool whenever we stumbled across things that still felt relatable in the present. It made the distance between us and the time we were studying seem much smaller.”
Among the many intriguing items in the archives was a letter from Mrs. Edith Ball Wilson thanking the school for honoring her late husband, former President Woodrow Wilson. There were also student dance cards from the 1930s, a varsity sweater from 1948, and letters of appreciation from alumni in the military stationed in Europe during World War II for their receipt of copies of the school newspaper, The Wilsonian. Numerous championship titles for student athletics and chess, as well as poems, songs, essays, and jokes featured in the school’s literary magazine and yearbooks told the story of Wilson through the decades.
These artifacts helped Cornell’s history majors to design an exhibit that aimed to provide, in their words, “an understanding of the continuity between the past and the present.”
"It’s easy to feel distant from people living many decades ago, especially due to the aesthetic and linguistic differences found in many sources. However, one of the joys of looking through the archives was stumbling upon the little things that felt timeless,” Fitzgerald said.
Wilson Middle School Principal Mike Waters said he loved the students’ dedication and assumed it was for a senior capstone project. None of the three students wished to receive credit for their volunteer work, however, either in the form of academic credit or as an InAct experience.
According to Professor of History Catherine Stewart, all three are outstanding students of history and were inducted into the national honors society for history, Phi Alpha Theta, in the spring of 2025.
“When I cold-called Dr. Stewart back in September, I had no idea what to expect,” Waters said. “Erin, Sara, and Jon answered the call and committed to Wilson weekly for the last 8 months, combing through 100 years of artifacts in dozens of boxes. Together, the three of them put together a wonderful display of Wilson Through the Decades. I could not be more pleased with their work.”
Decker currently works as a docent at the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois. Viager is moving on to pursue a master’s degree in information and library science at the University of Iowa, and Fitzgerald is traveling Europe before seeking work with a non-profit organization.
