Freedom Awards Gala honors Antonin Scalia, Iranian prisoner and others
Anna Tang, middle, looks over at officer Tyler Beddoes of the Spanish Fork Department of Public Safety as he is honored at the Freedom Festival 31st Annual Freedom Awards Gala Thursday, June 30, 2016 in Provo. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
Utah Governor Gary Herbert , left, speaks with a group of friends, including Montel Williams, right, at the Freedom Festival 31st Annual Freedom Awards Gala Thursday, June 30, 2016 in Provo. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
Eugene Scalia, son of Supreme Court of the United States Justice Antonin Scalia, speaks on behalf of his father at the Freedom Festival 31st Annual Freedom Awards Gala Thursday, June 30, 2016 in Provo. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
Awards were given, dinner was eaten and freedom was celebrated during the Freedom Festival 31st Annual Freedom Awards Gala Thursday, June 30, 2016 in Provo. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
Awards were given, dinner was eaten and freedom was celebrated during the Freedom Festival 31st Annual Freedom Awards Gala Thursday, June 30, 2016 in Provo. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
Awards were given, dinner was eaten and freedom was celebrated during the Freedom Festival 31st Annual Freedom Awards Gala Thursday, June 30, 2016 in Provo. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
As the Fourth of July approaches, Americans are reminded of the role independence and freedom has played in the lives of Americans.
The 31st annual Freedom Awards Gala, held at the Utah Valley Convention Center in Provo as part of America’s Freedom Festival, honored four people Thursday night whose stories and actions exemplify those values of God, family, freedom and country.
Perhaps no one appreciates freedom more than award-recipient Amir Hekmati.
During last year’s Freedom Festival, he was in a cell in an Iranian prison, where he would spend a total of four and a half years enduring psychological and physical torture. Hekmati once spent 17 months in solitary confinement in a 3 feet by 5 feet room.
In 2015, Montel Williams asked the 60,000 Stadium of Fire attendees in Provo to text government officials asking for Hekmati’s release. Williams told the crowd it would be great to have Hekmati join them for next year’s Freedom Festival, which of course this year he is.
Sensory and food deprivation were just a few of the tactics his captors used to try to coerce him to go on camera and ask President Obama to cave to their demands to bring him home.
It all started when Hekmati, an American-born Iraqi veteran, was visiting his sick grandma — who he had never met — in Iran in 2011. But he was thrown into prison and sentenced to 10 years for supposed war crimes committed during his military service in Iraq.
Hekmati at one point was sentenced to death, and he regularly watched other prisoners be taken out to be killed.
“Their screams and cries will haunt me,” he said. “And also serve as a lesson that had we not made sacrifices, we might be living in a country like that today.”
Hekmati said what kept him going throughout the hard times was remembering the dedication and service of his fellow Marines.
“So in that situation, the only thing that ever really made me fearful was doing something to hurt their reputation, more than any prison or any torture,” Hekmati told the crowd at the gala. “It’s truly an honor.”
Hekmati was released in January as part of a prisoner exchange.
Another award recipient was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly in February. His son, Eugene Scalia, was at the event to accept the award for his father.
“Thank you and I’d like to thank the foundation and Utah County for this honor,” Eugene Scalia said. “It actually was the invitation to this event that prompted the phone call to my father that ended up being the last conversation I had with him. It was exactly what one would have wanted in a last conversation.”
The other two award recipients were Anna Tang and Tyler Beddoes.
Tang, a Draper resident, described her family’s harrowing escape attempts from communist Vietnam. After two failed attempts for which her parents were imprisoned, the family finally made it to America through some help from an uncle who lived in Utah.
“I would like to thank the leaders of the LDS Church for the emphasis on helping refugees at their last LDS conference,” Tang said. “That is so nice to help people like my family and me to have freedom.”
Many locals have heard Beddoes’ story, as it happened in Spanish Fork in 2015. Beddoes accepted the award on behalf of the entire Spanish Fork Department of Public Safety for the department’s work in saving an 18-month-old girl who survived a car accident, but had been left in the freezing cold vehicle for more than 14 hours before being rescued. The girl’s mother was killed on impact.
“It took so many people involved, officers, showing up out of nowhere to help,” Beddoes said. “We worked so hard. I don’t consider myself a hero by no means, but these guys who stood up right here, you’re my heroes.”