St. Bernard Catholic Academy, Mill Basin, held its 14th annual Wax Museum Night. All students from fifth to eighth grade participated and portrayed someone they believed to have made an impact on the world.

Characters casted a wide range from former presidents, Greek gods, modern celebrities and even a few unknown, yet powerful people. Students gave speeches and told the crowd about their characters’ lives and accomplishments.

Parents and family were given coins which they handed out to the students to hear their performances.

Tomas Diaz as Jon Bon Jovi sang a few top hits.

A booklet designed by teacher Samantha Mendez contained all the students and characters as well as a famous quote from each.

Kevin Kocher won the art contest that allowed him to design the cover.

Patricia Bellard, who teaches grades five to eight social studies, was very proud of her students.

“This is our 14th year and it has gotten better and better every year,” she explained. “I started out assigning the characters but I’ve learned when the students get to pick they learn much more because they choose someone that truly inspires them.

“The main goal is to learn about an influential person, but also to work on public speaking. Some of the students need help getting up and being comfortable for public speaking but we also have a lot of hams here and that made it wonderful.”

Isadora Meristil, Trista Dolcy and Madison Bryant portrayed respectively Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Winston-Jackson, a team of African-American women mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program, and were recently highlighted in the feature film, “Hidden Figures.”

“We learned a lot about these women and how they were able to accomplish so much yet not many people know about them,” Meristil said. “They showed that men aren’t the only ones who made an impact on history and they are inspiring for us to see what we can accomplish ourselves.”

Kahdera Singh portrayed Indira Gandhi and she said she felt honored to do so.

“She was the first female prime minister of India and my family is from India,” said Singh. “As soon as I brought the list home and my grandmother saw her name, she wanted me to be her and it made her very proud. She helped me research and I learned so much about someone so important.”

Kevin Kocher was Theodore Roosevelt and couldn’t wait to be his character.

“As soon as I saw him on the list I knew I wanted to be him,” said Kocher. “He was such a great president and helped in so many ways to make America the way it is today. He was able to accomplish so many cool things and be such a big part of history.”