Community unites during annual H.E.A.R.T. King Day Breakfast
Staff Photo: Carlton Fletcher
By Carlton Fletcher
[email protected]
ALBANY — As South Carolina pastor Joseph Howard offered a stirring rendition of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech during Monday’s annual H.E.A.R.T. MLK Day Commemorative Breakfast, his intonation and cadence eerily like the fallen civil rights leader’s, it wasn’t difficult imagining King delivering the same words in what became his most famous oratory.
Howard’s voice rose with the power that King evoked when he delivered that speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, and the crowd at Mt. Zion Baptist Church Monday rose as one, many filled with the same spirit that King inspired all those years ago, his words still chill-inspiring and mesmerizing.
So it was Monday morning, as the Hands Extended Across Reaching Together organization, founded by employees of the Albany Procter & Gamble Paper Products Co., celebrated its 40th year of following the example set by King by helping the community’s less fortunate.
Albany Mayor Bo Dorough read a proclamation making Monday H.E.A.R.T. MLK Day in Albany, former P&G Albany Plant Manager Werhner Washington gave a stirring keynote address and the communitywide MLK Mass Choir — with powerful lead vocals by Bishop J. Nathan Paige — roused the crowd with a musical selection that again drew the crowd to its feet in celebration.
Before feeding a crowd estimated at “more than 1,500,” H.E.A.R.T. President Anne Johnson gave a brief history of the organization, best known perhaps for its “Shoes From the Heart” program through which it has donated more than 5,500 pairs of new athletic shoes to kids in the Dougherty County School System.
Washington urged the crowd to “use your platform and your gifts to do good.”
“Too many of our kids don’t have positive adult influences in their lives,” Washington, who now is retired, said. “We need the men in our community to teach young boys to dress for success, to never call women ‘B’s’ and ‘H’es,’ and that it’s never OK to use the ‘N-word,’ even if you are an African-American. And we need for our women to teach these young girls who are looking for love in all the wrong places that they first must learn to love themselves, that they are deserving to be treated like queens, not as playthings.”
Washington offered examples from the community — of small businessmen working to bring a robotics showcase to Albany, of an Albany State University professor who took students to China, of Boy Scout leaders who inspire youngsters in their charge, of a youth football coach who devotes time to his young players, and of former Albany State professor Brenda Hodges Tiller, who inspired Washington’s wife in her teaching career.
Washington jokingly said, “Mrs. Tiller was tough. They had a nickname for her, and I’m not going to say what it was, but it starts with a ‘K’ and rhymes with Tiller.”
The former P&G official also used his wife, Patsy, as an example of people he knew who used the gifts that they were given.
“I asked my wife once, ‘You are an amazing teacher, why don’t you apply to be a department head or a dean?’” Washington said. “She said to me, ‘No, that’s not my gift.’”
Many in the large crowd later took part in the Civil Rights Walk re-enactment and performed community services to celebrate the impact of King on the national holiday that commemorates the works of the slain civil rights leader.
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