East Liverpool student’s writing wins trip to New York

EAST LIVERPOOL -- Huge "Hamilton" fans and East Liverpool High School students Peyton Vulgamore, junior, and Lee Michewcz, senior, have been awarded a trip to New York City to see the hit musical on Broadway.

East Liverpool is one of 20 schools across the country who won the trip by participating in The Hamilton Education Program.

According to Peyton, the two had been looking for a way to go see the production in Pittsburgh or Cleveland, when Megan Hernandez came across the competition which required students to do a written word piece on the Boston Massacre using the same musical stylings of "Hamilton."

Peyton said she was not involved in the project at first and credits Lee for them winning the trip with her writing "Enough is Enough." In the piece which Lee and Peyton sang on video, Lee tied the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party into the problems happening in today's society with police brutality and protests.

Lee then asked Peyton to be a part of it by singing and recording it with her.

"Lee was the one who jumped on it first and is really the one behind it all," Peyton said. "I'm honestly just blessed to be a part of this. She is the one who really won it. I was just in the video."

Lee describes herself as big history fan with plans on obtaining a degree in archeology and anthropology.

"I want to be a professor in that, so 'Hamilton' was my inspiration to do it. But I have always been fascinated by the stuff that started the revolutionary war," she said.

The students will spend three days in New York City in May, seeing the Broadway production of "Hamilton," meeting the cast and having a question-and-answer session with them, shopping and sightseeing.

Lee said she has been a "Hamilton" fan since 2017. She also admitted that she did not like it at first and it took a friend of hers to explain the whole thing to her. Then she fell in love with it and this reignited her interest in musicals.

"It sparked my love for history and I'm like, 'oh hey, I can actually do something with history and people can make it into a whole thing,'" Lee said. "I can actually go and do that instead of working at McDonalds."

Winning the competition also helped Lee realize she is a decent writer and encouraged her to do more writing. Lee also helped write the proposal for the Cats in Space that helped the STEM program be awarded a chance to participate in a NASA sponsored project.

Peyton develop an interest in "Hamiliton" about four years ago when her sister saw the production in Pittsburgh and then got her into it.

According to Peyton, she and her sister listen to the soundtrack every day in the car and once Disney+ released the movie, she watched that multiple times.

Peyton said she likes the emotion in the musical and likes how it's a musical that is not typical for Broadway and incorporates the rap style music.

Kgarabrandt@mojonews.com