A King-sized dream: Dr. Woody Myers inspired by civil rights leader to make a difference

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.

Myers’ remarks focused in part on his range of emotions over King’s death.

“It was devastating to me,” Myers said, adding that part of him wanted to somehow make King’s horrible demise eventually count for something redeeming. “And half of me wanted to destroy something and let people know that this just wasn’t right.”

He opted for the higher road, and a few years later, found himself working an emergency room stint at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston while a medical student at Harvard University in Cambridge. He was stitching a groggy and drunken 13-year-old’s head laceration one night when the youngster finally perked up and suddenly grew angry amid his surroundings.

The patient noted Myers standing over him and loudly yelled a racial slur, following with “What are you doing?”

It marked one of the first times Myers had been the subject of such public racial ridicule. Myers told the patient that he didn’t want to discharge him until he had a chance to speak with his parents.

Amid his lengthy presentation, the doctor highlighted a seldom-heard King quote delivered in a speech at a convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Chicago in March 1966: ”Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

Others at the gathering acknowledged the work of King and others who worked for years on behalf of civil and human rights. Pastor Felipe Martinez at Columbus’ First Presbyterian Church, among the local leaders in social justice awareness, thanked God in an opening prayer that “we stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Bishop Johnnie Edwards, president of the Columbus/Bartholomew County Area Chapter of the NAACP, has been more than open about some of his ongoing frustrations with cases of racism locally. But he sounded an optimistic note Monday.

“I’m excited about what’s taking place in our community,” he said, adding that there is an emphasis on positive change.