Events to Honor King

In County and in Reston

The life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will be celebrated today and tomorrow as Loudoun County holds its ninth and Reston holds its 15th annual remembrance of the slain civil rights leader.

In Loudoun, participants will gather at 10 a.m. tomorrow on the courthouse lawn at King and Market streets in Leesburg and march to Douglass Community Center on East Market Street, stepping off at 10:30 a.m. A reception will follow at 11:30 a.m.

This year's theme is "How to Live the Dream," with guest speaker Wendall T. Fisher, senior program director of the YMCA of Loudoun County and a former School Board member.

Entertainment will be provided by Mosaic Harmony, the Potomac Falls High School Step Team, the One World Baha'i Youth Workshop and singer Gladys Robinson.

To accommodate the march, one block of East Market Street, from King to Church streets, will be closed to traffic from 9:30 to 11 a.m. tomorrow.

Other closings tomorrow for King Day will include the Loudoun County landfill, county libraries and the county animal shelter. The libraries will be open during normal hours today.

In Reston, events will begin at 2:30 p.m. today with a march from the Reston Community Center at Lake Anne. Later in the day, there will be a concert at the Martin Luther King Jr. Christian Church, featuring a choir from the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation.

Tomorrow's day-long schedule in Reston begins with an 8 a.m. prayer breakfast at the community center at Hunters Woods, with a speech by Ruby DeMesme, an assistant secretary of the Air Force. Later, there will be activities for youths and seniors and an afternoon gospel concert and birthday celebration whose keynote speaker will be Belle S. Wheelan, president of Northern Virginia Community College.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information on the activities in Reston, call Haywood R. Hopson Jr. at 703-476-4500.

King was killed by a sniper April 4, 1968, as he stood on a hotel balcony in Memphis. Monday, which would have been King's 72nd birthday, is a national holiday.