Walk honors Marchand

Fundraiser to take place April 5, the veteran’s birthday

By RACHEL LANE, rlane@newsandsentinel.com
WEST UNION — A scholarship fundraiser, the first Jason Marchand Memorial Walk for Freedom, will begin as a way to honor veterans and remember Cpl. Jason N. Marchand.

The walk, April 5, will be at Cline Stansberry Field, West Union, Doddridge County. The opening ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m. and will end at 11 a.m. April 6. Food and raffle items will be available.

“We’re not doing this to glorify ourselves. We’re doing this to say ‘thank you, Jason, and we love you,’” said Eric Parsons, Thirty-Eight Twelve Foundation organizer and Marchand’s step-brother. The foundation’s name came from Marchand being the 3,812 American soldier killed in Iraq.

“Anyone who stands for the country is a hero,” Parsons said. Soldiers “are very courageous in not backing down in the face of danger.”

Marchand, 26 when he was in Iraq in October 2007 with the U.S. Army, was a 2000 graduate of Doddridge County High School. The scholarship money raised will go to a senior at DCHS attending WVU.

“The scholarship was his mother’s idea,” Parsons said. “My hope is to eventually raise enough money for a half a year to a year tuition at WVU.”

Parsons said April 5, the day of the walk, would have been Marchand’s 27th birthday.

“I’ll stand for him because he fell for me,” he said. “This is no little thing for me.”

His family has been in the military for the past several generations, he said. Area veterans are invited to walk the first lap.

All the money raised by the walk, raffle and food will go to the foundation.

For more information about the walk or the Thirty-Eight Twelve Foundation, visit www.jasonmarchandmemorial.org.