McCallie rising senior Calder Gant earned a Top Ten national finish in the National History Day paper category
By the time rising senior Calder Gant learned he was just the second McCallie student in history to earn a Top Ten national finish in the National History Day paper category, he was driving a golf cart on the Bronze Buffalo course in Idaho, hanging out with friends.
"It meant a lot," he said of his reaction when he first heard the news. "Just to know my paper was one of the 10 best submitted. It is definitely a thrill."
His paper—"From Disaster to Reform: How the Love Canal Disaster Shaped Environmental Policy"—also won top prize for the best project in environmental history at the state contest this year, earning a cash award.
As the Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr. Chair of American History, Dr. Duke Richey ‘86 wrote in an email about Gant's honor: "This is unbelievable. There were probably at least 50,000 kids who entered a paper into the NHD contest's first round this year, and at the end of the day, Calder ended up in the Top Ten. And only the second McCallie student to be so honored in this category. This will make it really easy to write a college letter for him.”
Gant's wish is for the first of those letters to go to UNC-Chapel Hill. "That is kind of my dream school right now," he said.
The first Top Ten paper winner for McCallie was Cotton Snoddy '23, who now attends Harvard. His father was David Snoddy '86. Calder's father, Chris, also attended McCallie, graduating in 1997. His mother, Ali, is the Chief Advancement Officer at GPS. His identical twin brother J.D. prompted Calder to recently dye his hair blond to distinguish the two brunettes from one another.
McCallie's other two Top Ten winners have come in the website category. Pi Eager, also the son of an alum, Grant Eager ‘89, was honored in 2018 for his project, "Winters v. United States: Native Americans, Water, and the Unintended Consequences of Compromise." Josh Ellsworth '24 was a Top Ten choice in 2023 for "A Crying Ecosystem: Rachel Carson's Frontier in Environmental Awareness."
In this year's paper competition, Gant was the only member of the Top Ten who resides below the Mason-Dixon line.
So, why choose the Love Canal tragedy of 1977 regarding hazardous waste dumping to write about?
"I have always been interested in the environment," Gant said. "I had heard about the Love Canal disaster and wanted to learn more about it and how the role of the EPA has changed in protecting the environment. Between the first paper and revisions before the national competition, I probably spent somewhere around 40 hours working on it."
Would he like to enter the competition again next year?
"Until I went to the nationals at the University of Maryland, I would have said 'No,'" he said. "But I met some cool people there and made some new friends there, so if I come up with a topic I like next year, I might enter it again."
That should make it even easier for Dr. Richey to write those college letters.