Wayne County student makes finals in national competition
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on July 5, 2016 1:46 PM
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Skylar Holland poses in character as Virginia Hall, a famous World War II spy and the subject of her presentation, given at the University of Maryland.
Skylar Holland, a rising eighth-grader at Wayne School of Engineering, recently made it to the final round of competition for National History Day, earning recognition for having the best entry from North Carolina and ranking 11th in the nation.
The contest -- which included documentaries, websites, performances, papers and exhibits -- drew students from around the U.S. and even other countries.
It was not the 12-year-old's first time vying for the honor, though. Last year, her report on Helen Keller netted her a third-place win in the state, but only the top two advanced to the national arena.
This year's entry had to be special, she said.
"Based on the theme, 'Exchange. Explore. Encounter,' I took exchanging and encountering, and I was able to think, well, that kind of sounds like something a spy would do, exchange information," she said. "So I decided that I was going to look up female spies.
"You had a wide variety, like Mata Hari, but I wasn't going to do her for obvious reasons."
That's when she happened upon Virginia Hall, a Baltimore woman with a wooden leg who leveraged her job as a New York Post reporter as her own cover story. She would become the "greatest female spy of World War II," Miss Holland said.
"I think she was a very good spy because she continued writing articles for the New York Post and then she didn't let her disability of the wooden leg slow her down," she said. "She was able to cross the Pyrenees with her wooden leg, while she was hiding it from her guide.
"She had to leave France because there was a double agent in her group and he kind of ratted on her and told people that she was for the other side."
The bulk of the past year was spent doing research on the spy who even eluded the Gestapo and Klaus Barbie, she said.
"One of the first stories I read was when she was very young, she wore a snake as a bracelet to school and no one knew it was a snake," she said with a laugh. "She was kind of a spunky person. She was outgoing.
"I think that kind of related to me because I kind of see myself as a spunky person."
For her first effort, writing about Helen Keller in history teacher Jesse Pittard's class, the research project and participation in National History Day were part of the curriculum.
Students weren't required to do it the next year, Skylar said, but she had amassed such good memories of the project, she decided to do it again.
"I think it's really interesting to take a historical figure that you might not know something about and research it and research it and dig and see how much you can get out of it, and seeing it turn into a play and telling others that person's story, more than they already know, it's just a great experience," she said.
She went above and beyond for her 10-minute presentation at the state and national levels-- including props, costume changes and even adopting the same hairstyle as Miss Hall.
When the call did not come that she made it to the Top 10, the Hollands, who had spent the bulk of the week in College Park, Md., for the contest, decided to head home. En route, Pittard called to announce she had placed 11th and won the award for the outstanding entry, for having the best project from the state of North Carolina.
The way she would later receive the award bore a modern-day resemblance to how Virginia Hall received her medal.
"She was going to be awarded the distinguished service cross in 1945 by (President) Truman, but since she was still undercover, she had to decline the public ceremony, and she had to do it in his office," Miss Holland said.
"So we did it very privately -- in a Bojangles parking lot on Highway 70," Skylar's mother, Ginger Holland, said with a smile.
She also leveraged the efforts into an invitation to visit the CIA Museum, where a painting of Miss Hall is on display. Mrs. Holland, a teacher at Eastern Wayne Middle School, discovered the man who commissioned the painting was from North Carolina, e-mailed him and was put in contact with the museum. It is located inside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., she said, and is used as a "training tool and inspiration" for new and existing operatives.
"They don't do public tours," Mrs. Holland said. "They had this whole exhibit on Virginia Hall. They took us on a three-and-one-half-hour tour."
History remains Skylar's favorite school subject, she says, and will likely factor into what she decides to do in the future.
For now, though, as she told the judges, the story of Virginia Hall is one that needed to be told.
"I feel like that's the spirit of history day, to tell somebody's story and to get somebody interested in their story," she said.