MLK Day

It was our Senior Class Project to make this day a national holiday. That was in 1972. I really don't know if our class did that much in that regard, and doubt we did, since we haven't yet even agreed on one single solitary reunion (none has been held ever). One person did. Yoland King was in my class - Henry Grady High School class of 1972. We called her Yoki.

I have a blog from last year you might want to read for background. Please do so before you get impressed that I knew Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, Jr. Because I didn't know those people. I knew Yoki's momma and Yoki's daddy. They are two entirely different people.

Coretta Scott King would never give another human being a look that could fry ice in half a millisecond. Yoki's momma could, would and did. I'm not the only one to be the recipient of that look. You know who you are. You are a better person for it. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't sit on the floor and play games with the little kids. Or tell stories on the porch to the older kids to teach them some small enormous lesson in living. Yoki's daddy did. And you know who you are, too.

There are people who make a difference in our lives and in our world, who touch one person, and who touch millions. Sometimes they're the same person. Sometimes not. There's a Jewish proverb that if you save one person's life, you save all the generations of lives that person touches. It's a good proverb. If you touch one life, if you reach out and help one person, you reach out and help all people. You don't have to be Coretta. You don't have to be Martin. You just have to be somebody who tries.