DELMAR, Md.- A festival to honor Corporal Keith Heacook is coming to Delmar on April 28 at the Heron's Pond Amphitheater. Event organizers tell WBOC there will be live music, a car show and maybe even a fly over from state helicopters. The event will be free, but donations are encouraged and would go to the Corporal Heacook Scholarship Fund. Julie Parish started the fund and says the news of the festival is fantastic.
“That just means there will be more scholarships that can be given out or larger scholarships can be given out so the fact that this is being put on every year and that donations are going to the Corporal Heacook scholarship fund is huge,” said Parish. “Public service right now is getting a huge hit and nobody wants to go into public service, so hopefully this will um show there is value in that and we’re grateful for people who put their life on the line for us everyday”.
Parish said she was drawn to create the fund because she has family in public service, and she wanted to do something after Heacook's horrific death.
“I wanted to do something after Keith’s horrific death and I figure this was a way that I could contribute," said Parish. “My family has been in public service for a long time and I wanted Keith to be remembered”.
The guest of honor at the event will be Steven Franklin, who was brutally beaten just after Heacook's attack on the morning of April 25.
"Although it’s been almost a year, it feels like yesterday,” said Franklin. “He was what everybody would want a police officer to be”.
Franklin suffered multiple injuries and says he is still recovering from the attack almost one year ago.
“I don’t have the balance and coordination that I had before. From the skull fractures. But I’m gonna get it back,” said Franklin.
Event organizers tell WBOC that Live Nation, a national entertainment company, will attend the event to see about sending a national act for next year's festival. The owner of the amphitheater has donated the space for the next three years of April 28.
