Dr. King

It was 40 years ago today that Martin Luther King was assassinated. Gosh, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I got the news.

On April 4th I was six weeks away from finishing my 2-year course at Rutgers Library School in New Brunswick. That day I had taken an elderly gentleman from Free Acres with me to the campus so he could talk with the Special Collections Librarian about donating some papers he had (letter from FDR, etc.). I left him in the SC Dept. and went to my classes, saying I would be back at 4:00 to pick him up. Well, when I returned at that hour he wasn't there and someone informed me he had been taken to the hospital as he had collapsed. Great!

I drove to the hospital and sat in the Emergency waiting room. A young doctor came out and asked if I was Mrs. B. When I said no he sort of smirked (man 86, woman 27). I called the real Mrs. B and doctor talked with her, then said he couldn't release him, even though he had regained strength, because X-rays showed a darkening on one lung. Mrs. B said pooh, it had been there for a long time. Talk, talk, back and forth. Finally they said Mr. B could be released. I'd been in the waiting room for several hours by now. Suddenly, as we were getting ready to go, an ambulance driver walked in the door and said Martin Luther King had been shot. Shock, pure shock, horrible. Another assassination! Well, I carefully put Mr. B in my car and we drove home. He was okay. But all we could think about was the horrible event. My car didn't have a radio so we couldn't even listen for news. It was a long, unforgettable day. Forty years ago.