Tecumseh student wins Michigan History Day awards
- 15 hours ago
- 6 min read
By DAVID PANIAN
TECUMSEH — An interest in World War II and women’s roles during the conflict led to a Tecumseh third-grader winning awards in a statewide history contest.
Annabelle Buechele-Beasecker’s exhibit on women factory workers known colloquially as Rosie the Riveter won both district and state finalist honors in the 2026 Michigan History Day contest. Her display also won the Best Use of Economic History or Impact award.
Michigan History Day is a yearlong educational program that is sponsored by the Historical Society of Michigan and encourages students to explore local, state, national and world history, according to the HSM’s website. Each year has a different theme. This year’s theme was “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History.”
There also are different kinds of projects students can do: exhibits, performances, papers, websites and documentaries. Some of them could be either an individual or group project. Annabelle chose to do an individual exhibit.
Rosies’ effect on the workforce and society in general fit all three parts of the theme.
“I wanted something that was based on World War II, and I wanted something that kind of involved women,” Annabelle said recently at the Tecumseh Area Historical Society, where she did much of her research. “I thought about how women played baseball, so I looked into that, and Rosies would also work at plants and make planes, so that’s how I got to this theme.”
“One of the things that we talked about quite a bit was that revolution didn’t necessarily mean guns and war, that revolution was really the change that impacted people,” Debbie Kogelman, a volunteer at the Tecumseh Area Historical Museum and a retired teacher who helped Annabelle with her research, said. “She really hit all three with her presentation, just by the nature of it, and her interest.”
The Rosies did a lot for people in the future, particularly women, Annabelle said.
“They used to be called housewives, they would stay at home and look after the children while the men were at war,” she said.
But with many men off at war, someone had to work in the factories making the equipment, ammunition and other supplies the military needed. That’s where those housewives came in. In southeastern Michigan, many women worked at Ford’s Willow Run plant where B-24 Liberator bombers were assembled.
“They did jobs that were previously held by men, and the men did not appreciate women being at work once they returned,” Annabelle said.
Annabelle learned the workplace wasn’t all the Rosies changed. Working with the Tecumseh Area Historical Society on this project put her in touch with local historian Robert Elliott. Elliott was going to attend a conference where there would be a Rosie, so he asked Annabelle to write a letter to the Rosies. She did, and it read, in part, “I was hoping if you could tell me how you impacted the future for women and little girls like me. Thank you for helping provide a future for me.”
When Elliott met Delphine Klaput, he recorded a brief video on his phone of her sharing her memories of being a Rosie so that he could show it to Annabelle.
“We paved the way,” Klaput said in her video.
“I knew some of the information,” Annabelle said about seeing Klaput’s video response to her letter, “but I didn’t know how big of a thing it was, so I was surprised.”
For example, the Rosies changed women’s fashion.
“They got to wear pants,” Annabelle said.
The Rosies didn’t have to wear dresses at work. It was the first thing Klaput mentioned in her video reply to Annabelle.
Her interest in WWII came from her great-grandparents and their roles in the war. Her great-grandmother would show training videos at Pearl Harbor, which is where she met the soldier who became her husband and Annabelle’s great-grandfather.
Annabelle’s mother, Jamie Buechele, learned about Michigan History Day from Ashley Pfund at the Lenawee Intermediate School District. Buechele said she was lamenting to Pfund that there is a lack of activities for kids who are more academically oriented, and it was difficult to even know where to begin to find activities that might interest a student like Annabelle who has an interest in history.
A couple of weeks later, Pfund called Buechele to tell her she had learned about a history-oriented program that might fit. That was the Michigan History Day program.
“I guess there’s a strong case to be made for communicating with folks in the community that, ‘Hey, my kid needs something. Do you know of anything?’” Buechele said. “And even though she didn’t have the answer right then, she eventually did have the answer, and it resulted in something really special for Annabelle and for everybody involved.”
Buechele then contacted Kogelman about helping Annabelle with her research.
The project was also a good outlet for Annabelle, Buechele said, since she was new to the Tecumseh school district this past school year and changed classrooms at the semester break.
Annabelle started on the project before Christmas last year and worked on it a lot during Christmas break. Then once school resumed, she would head over to the museum after school.
Kogelman said the museum volunteers were very excited about Annabelle’s interest in history.
“Annabelle came in once a week for several weeks, and we did research, and I helped her lay out her design, and then she would go home and do her homework, and she’d bring it back the next week, and we just kept refining it until she came up with this display,” Kogelman said.
There were a couple of weeks when they got close to the district competition when she went to the museum on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
There was even some question about whether Annabelle would make it to the district competition on Feb. 28 at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park in Monroe.
“She got very, very sick the week of the competition,” Buechele said. “We were worried she wasn’t going to make it, and so there was some last-minute construction that had to happen based on her design. … Everything was done to her specifications and her vision.”
Annabelle’s display, titled “The Rosies at Work,” includes a B-24 model from J-Bar Hobbies in Tecumseh that her grandfather, John Buechele, helped her with. It also includes some artifacts from Elliott’s personal collection of WWII artifacts, including a factory ID card, a rivet gun, welding goggles, work gloves and a replica radio. It also has her letter to the Rosies and the binder of research materials.
“She had some really good help from special family members and very good friends,” Annabelle’s mother said.
The exhibit explains that Rosies didn’t only work in factories but were “any woman who helped in the war effort.”
“Although only some used a rivet gun, all Rosies paved the way for women in their future,” the display says. “The Rosies made it possible for all little girls to think about their future differently. Now girls can pursue any job they wish, and they can wear jeans and pants.”
The contest put size and word limits on the displays, Buechele and Kogelman said.
There are elementary, middle school and high school divisions. For the students with exhibits, their relatives and friends left the room when the judges arrived. The judges would then review each display and ask the students questions.
“I had to explain why I chose this topic, and why I chose it about the Rosies,” Annabelle said. “I chose this because I think that the Rosies did a lot for a lot of people in the future.”
Kogelman has served as a History Day judge. She said the judges have a rubric they use to score the presentations. They look at the topic’s historical significance and review the paper the student wrote on their research process and the annotated bibliography the student compiled. They then have about 10 minutes to ask the student questions, then they confer about the exhibits, then provide feedback. Annabelle’s feedback was minimal and was related to the aesthetics of the display.
“We had to take the papers and reprint them and straighten them out,” Annabelle said.
“The type of glue we had to use the first time was not great,” Buechele said.
The feedback allowed Annabelle to fine tune her exhibit for the state competition April 25 at Grand Valley State University, where there were 600 students across all grade levels.
“So she improved on her display, and then it was judged again at the state level,” Kogelman said.
Along with the award for Best Use of Economic History or Impact, Annabelle received $100.
“I’m going to put 50 in my savings account and leave the 50 for me,” she said.
Kogelman said the museum volunteers are hopeful that more Tecumseh students will follow Annabelle’s lead and participate in Michigan History Day.
“We here at the museum are very excited and hopeful that students will come to us to ask us to help them with research and planning,” she said. “…We would really love for the Lenawee County schools, Tecumseh in particular, to get more involved in this event because it’s pretty spectacular.”
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