One of the aspects I love about living in Turkey Hollow is that it is often so removed from the harshness of the world. When the Spring sun is out, the deer are grazing and the air is clean, the ugliness of the outside world seems so far away. The key debate around here isn't politics or religion, but the weather - because that will determine the navigability of our dirt road. Yet,sometimes the reality of the world seeps in and we are forced to live not only current events but also relive those that changed the world forever.

When I read this week that it has been forty years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was killed, it took my breath away. How could so much time pass so quickly? The events of that day, and in fact that year, are entrenched into my mind as if they occurred yesterday. How do you explain that terrible year when Dr. King and Senator Kennedy were assassinated to a youngster? The horrors of those moments and the images never leave. The sense at emptiness you still feel every time you hear their names evoked. Did we really live through such a year or was it all a nightmare?

In April of 1968, I was a young 22 year old man. The first three months of that year I had traveled from one end of the country to the other organizing for Senator Eugene McCarthy, a peace candidate for President of the United States. Thousands and thousands of young students were filled with idealism and hope. We were winning the battle against the Vietnam War and we had just forced President Lyndon Johnson not to seek reelection. Everything, it seemed, was going our way.

On the fourth of that month, I was headed from the national campaign headquarters for McCarthy in Washington to Philadelphia to work on the Pennsylvania primary. My orders were to stop briefly in the city of Brotherly Love and to immediately catch a plane to Pittsburgh where I would help organize the field operations for the peace candidates. As I departed the train in 30th Street Station in Philly and entered the main room, I noticed a huge crowd gathered around a flickering black and white television monitor. Women were on their knees praying and some men were muttering angrily. I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong. Then an elderly African American man who looked gentle and kind, looked at me with cold steely eyes and said, "Y'all finally killed him." Puzzled, I asked, "Killed who?" With tears in his eyes he answered, "Dr. King".

The wind was taken totally out of me and I fell onto one of the station's long wooden benches. Out of breath, I just stared at him and he stared at me and finally I just started sobbing. The elderly man suddenly transformed and sat next to me and put his arm around me and said over and over, "I know, son. I know..." I cried into his shoulder as he held me. I simply could not believe that 'they' had killed one of two men who had shaped my politics. The first, John Kennedy, was also killed by a bullet less than five years earlier. How could this happen in America? How?

Not knowing what to do, I pulled myself together and attempted to apologize to the elderly man and also to thank him for his kindness all at the same time. He patted me on the shoulder and just walked away into his own sorrow and grief. Even in death, Dr. King brought us briefly together. None of us were alone that day.

Forty years have passed since that day in the station. Often I wonder who that man was and what was his story. I do know that he no doubt would have a huge smile on his face today as he watched Barack Obama run for President of the United States. What a gift Dr. King gave us all.

Things do change after all.