COLUMBUS, Ind. — The day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, a passionate dream of making a difference was born within a young Woody Myers.
He was 14 when he came in from backyard hoops that evening into his family’s home at 29th and Arsenal in Indianapolis.
And then he saw the news, and also a live local news feed from elsewhere in the city, where a visiting Robert F. Kennedy was announcing King’s death to a stunned crowd.
“I sat there and watched television virtually uninterrupted for hours, wondering to myself, ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ Dr. King had been such an inspiration to me.”
Myers, now 65, became a physician, pushing even years ago for equal access for all to quality medical care, a platform that was part of his unsuccessful run for Indiana governor in 2020. The former state health commissioner was the keynote speaker Monday evening at the rescheduled King Day program coordinated by the Columbus/Bartholomew County Area Chapter of the NAACP, IUPUC, and the African American Fund of Bartholomew County.
The program was moved to the end of Black History Month after organizers deemed that a rise in the COVID-19 Omicron variant made the original Jan. 17 public program unsafe.
About 110 people attended at The Commons in downtown Columbus, including leaders in government, law enforcement, education, the nonprofit sector, and faith communities.
For the complete story, and more photos, see Wednesday’s Republic.
