Md. CEO starts foundation in memory of ‘Route 29 Batman’

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A coincidence involving the date of Aug. 16 and the number 29 inspired the creation of a foundation in memory of a Maryland man who was known for dressing up as Batman and visiting children in hospitals.

Richard Kurland, CEO of Owings Mills-based Employment Background Investigations Inc., and his wife, Marti, started the EBI Just One World Foundation in memory of Leonard Robinson to raise money to support children’s hospitals and child patients. The company said it would absorb administrative costs of the nonprofit foundation. Robinson was a founding investor in the firm.

The foundation will raise money, in-kind donations and volunteer for the Children’s Hospital at Sinai at Lifebridge Health Center in Baltimore, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Hope for Henry Foundation in Washington, which supports children with cancer and other serious illnesses.

“Lenny was a beloved local hero who embraced the Batman persona in his unwavering commitment to deliver hope and strength to sick and terminally ill children,” Kurland said in a news release. “The Just One World Foundation is our way of honoring him and to empower Sinai, Hope for Henry, and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to continue to pursue transformative research, while delivering hope to children everywhere. Just as Lenny always had in a superhero way.”

Robinson became known as the “Route 29 Batman” after Montgomery County police published video of his stop by officers while he was wearing a Batman costume and driving a custom Batmobile on U.S. Route 29 in Silver Spring.

Robinson died in a motor vehicle accident on Aug. 16, 2015, on Interstate 70 in Maryland. Two years later, on Aug. 16, 2017, Richard Kurland witnessed his 10-year-old daughter, Georgia, nearly killed in an all-terrain vehicle accident in Montana. She underwent surgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on Aug. 29 that year and recovered.

Richard Kurland said in a news release that he and Robinson are forever connected through business and the “one world theory of coincidences” — the date Aug. 16 and the number 29.

Kurland said the idea to start the foundation came to him as he was planning to dedicate a Batman-themed coffee lounge in the company’s headquarters in Owings Mills in memory of Robinson for the company’s 25th birthday. He spoke to Leonard Robinson’s brother, Scott Robinson, another founding investor in the firm, who connected the dates of both accidents and the number 29 for the road that made Leonard Robinson famous and the date of the surgery.

The company opened the LBR Batman4Ever Lounge on Nov. 14.