Festival schedule being shaken up by shutdown

HACKLEBURG - Spring is normally one of the most exhausting and demanding times for Hackleburg Town Clerk Carla Rector. But not this year.
Planning for the annual Neighbor Day Festival normally consumes the first two to three months of Rector’s year, as she books musicians and vendors and coordinates with town officials and community leaders to host the most successful Neighbor Day festival possible.
Instead, as Marion County and the rest of the nation is under quarantine and social-distancing orders, the Hackleburg Town Hall office sits quietly, closed to the public.
Hackleburg’s 19th Annual Neighbor Day event was scheduled to take place this Friday and Saturday, April 24 and 25, only days before the ninth anniversary of the April 27, 2011, tornado that hit the town, leveling houses and businesses and killing 18. That year, Neighbor Day was canceled, too.