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Alabama-born engineer Henry Gilford helped build MLK memorial
Published: Sunday, August 28, 2011, 7:00 AM Updated: Sunday, August 28, 2011, 11:44 AM
By Mary Orndorff -- The Birmingham News
Henry Gilford was 18 and just three days from leaving Dale County to start class at Alabama A&M University -- the first in his family to go straight to college -- when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
"I was watching the hundreds of thousands of people on the Mall and I was smart enough to know that history was being made, but I had no idea I would be a part of it all these years later," said Gilford, now 66.
Gilford's biography is exactly what King had in mind in 1963 when he called for justice and equality for African-Americans: black son of a sharecropper in segregated Alabama earns a college degree, works hard, owns his own business.
And that business would put Gilford on the team that built the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial, which will open this weekend in Washington. Its dedication was set for today -- the 48th anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- but was postponed until fall because of Hurricane Irene.
http://blog.al.com/sweethome/2011/08/alabam-born_engineer_henry_gil.html
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