Students, teachers, faculty and family members of the Corcoran Family showed up last week at Black’s Mill Elementary School to celebrate the opening of the John Wayne Corcoran Memorial Reading Garden.

Corcoran was a fifth grader at the elementary school, when he was killed in a hunting accident more than a year ago.

The memorial garden will ensure that his memory lives on, according to his mother, Bobbie Jo Corcoran.

In a recent interview, Corcoran said her son always “loved to read outside and loved to be outside with a book.”

Black’s Mill Elementary School received a grant from Home Depot to fund the garden’s construction. A local landscape architect donated the design.