It’s not every community festival that can arrange for a Foxtrot police helicopter to set down beside the Moonbounce and delight the kids, but the “Day of Hope Festival” held in East Baltimore’s Darley Park on Saturday was a special event for a community that’s been going through some bad times.

As the whop-whop-whop sound intensified, children and adults thronged the fence protecting a grassy area next to William C. March Middle School and cheered when the big blue-and-black helicopter touched down.

After the rotors stopped and the pilots emerged, people were allowed to approach.

“Okay, you are a very special group of kids. You will be able to sit inside this helicopter,” said a grinning Maj. Melvin T. Russell, the commander of the Eastern District and head of their Transformation Team. “Just don’t touch any buttons!”

Sponsored by the local clergy, Somebody Cares Baltimore and the Baltimore City Police Department’s Eastern District, the event featured a puppet show, carnival games and play equipment for kids.

There was also live music, free boxes of vegetables and groceries, HIV screening and blood pressure testing, as well as an appearance by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the Pratt Library bookmobile and booths with assorted services and information about housing, health and home improvement.

“We’re trying to bring healing and hope back to this community and spread it to the whole area and to all of East Baltimore,” said Dr. Marshall F. Prentice, pastor of Zion Baptist Church on North Caroline Street.

Similar “Day of Hope” festivals have been held in recent years at other East Baltimore locations, including Frank C. Bocek Park, at the corner of Madison Street and Edison Highway, and Madison Square Park, at Caroline and Eager streets.

“You heard about the young people we lost?” said Rev. Gregory R. Maddox, of Faith Baptist Church on Bond Street.

Children Gunned Down

The ministers were referring to the deaths of 13-year-old Monae Turnage in March, and 12-year-old Sean Johnson in May 2011.

The children lost their lives blocks from each other in Darley Park, which is in a part of the city that Baltimore Health Department officials said this year has the city’s the highest homicide rate. Their youth – and the circumstances of their deaths – riveted a crime-plagued city.

Johnson, of Lake Clifton, had been with friends on a Cliftview Avenue porch, watching a basketball game on television, when a man turned a corner and opened fire on the group, killing the 12-year-old and wounding three others. Three men face charges in connection with the shooting.

Turnage, an eighth-grader at William C. March who lived a few blocks from Johnson, was, according to police, accidentally shot by two friends, who then hid her body under trash in an alley.

In May, two boys, one 13 and the other 12, were sentenced in juvenile court in connection with her killing.

In another twist ratcheting up tension in the community, an officer under Russell’s command, John A. Ward, was suspended amid allegations that the rifle used to kill Monae was found in his car.

“And there was another innocent death just last night,” Prentice said, referring to Friday’s shooting on North Caroline Street in Oliver of 21-year-old Derian Hampton.

Prentice started to explain what he meant by “innocent” and then trailed off. “I’d better leave that alone.”

Free Stringbeans, Free Haircuts

The minister turned back to the task at hand – giving the man seated in front of him a very close-cropped hair-do with an electric clipper.

Prentice may spend his Sundays in clerical garb but on this sunny, hot Saturday he was in a gray “Day of Hope” tee-shirt, sweat rolling down his cheek, staffing the festival’s free haircut tent.

“My father taught me how to cut hair. I cut my sons’ hair,” Prentice explained to a reporter, as the smell of grilling meat and the crisp harmonies of the a capella group “One Accord” mingled in the air.

“We’ve got to pray for all the people, who’re sleeping in the street,” they sang. “Pray for all the people who don’t have enough to eat.”

A line about 80 people long snaked past the singers – people waiting for a box of groceries. One of them was Sandra Sabb, helped on this day by a neighborhood 10-year-old, Brandon Hinton.

“I lost my job and my unemployment just ran out,” said Sabb, 51, who had worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield in customer service and then as a clerk at a liquor store. After two years, she said, the store owner “couldn’t keep me on – he couldn’t afford to.”

Since then, she’s had to apply for cash assistance from Social Services and scrape by as best she can to support herself and her sons, ages 14 and 16, at home. “I swallowed my pride,” she said, wincing.

The box of free items she and Brandon were carrying away from the festival contained laundry detergent and plastic bags of produce including string beans, sweet potatoes and white potatoes.

“It helps a lot,” she said, setting the box down for a moment and standing with Brandon to pose for a picture.