Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

ATLANTA -- I don’t usually write my column in first person. Somehow, the third person offers up the little bit of distance, even objectivity, that I often like to at least pretend having here.

But I’ve just enjoyed a pretty interesting experience, one that I’d like to share. And I’ve also got a few personal thoughts to impart. So the first person, I reckon, is the best way to go.

It’s been my good fortune for the past year to serve as vice-chair of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission. Sen. Henry Marsh of Richmond is its chair. This commission was created by the Virginia General Assembly in 1992 to be the coordinating entity of the state’s annual celebration of the King national holiday. (It was Ronald Reagan, you may recall, who many years prior signed into law legislation establishing the King holiday.) The commission also has as part of its mission the responsibility to promote King’s dream of a more just society. As a nation, we’re still working on that.

King would’ve been 74 years old this past week. He was all of 39 when assassinated in 1968. It’s hard to think of him being in his mid-70s today had that Memphis bullet not hit him in the neck. We all tend to think of him still as that nice-looking young man that we so often see in pictures and film footage. It really is hard to envision him at 74.

I had the honor this past weekend of traveling to Atlanta with Gov. Mark Warner to attend The King Center’s 16th annual “Salute to Greatness Dinner.” Some 2,000 people of all races and ages packed into the massive Hyatt ballroom to celebrate this year’s honorees: baseball great Hank Aaron and his wife, Billye, for all that they’ve accomplished singularly and as a couple, and Henry Ford, II (posthumously), and his Ford Motor Company for its decades upon decades of extraordinary charity and civic commitment.

King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, was there. His sons, Martin Luther King III. and Dexter King, were there, as were other members of the King family.

I’m rather proud to report that Virginia was the only state who had its governor in attendance (Georgia’s governor wasn’t even there), not to mention a contingency from its state legislature. Warner represented us well.

So it was while I was milling around and looking at the larger-than-life pictures of King and watching film clips on the big screen that it sort of hit me that this guy was but a year older than me at his death. Gosh, to think of all he accomplished – or fought to accomplish – in his young adult life on such a grand scale. King, a “trumpet of consciousness,” as he’s been called, turned a nation on its head and began making us take a good look at ourselves. How many other 39-year-olds have had such an impact on 250 million people? What would he have done had he lived to celebrate his 74th birthday last week?

I’m not the only one who had these thoughts of awe. The Virginia delegation to the Atlanta dinner also included Marsh; Del. Dwight Jones, a 10-year House veteran, also from Richmond; Dietra Trent, director of the state’s Council on Human Rights; and the Rev. Willie Woodson, pastor of Richmond’s First United Presbyterian Church and a well known community leader. I think we all in some way expressed these same sentiments.

Which tends to bring me back to our state’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission.

For the past year, we’ve been working to put some oomph behind our mission to promote King’s legacy and philosophy of non-violent social change for a more just society.

I think that King, at 74, would be proud that Virginia’s commission is pushing to establish the very first “virtual” King Center, one that has both “think tank” and education components. It’s to be a web-based initiative among five distinguished state universities: Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, James Madison University, and Norfolk State University. Our King Center also will work to establish an annual fellowship at each of the five participating universities.

But the commission’s next big undertaking will be to coordinate in 2004 a statewide conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Those plans are just now getting under way.

As a nation, we still have lots of work to do in realizing King’s dream of a more just society and a “beloved community.” As a state, we also still have some work to do.

I was thinking about all of this while sitting among those 2,000 gathered in Atlanta. It was rather exciting – inspiring, even – to see so many gathered in one place united in purpose to do good.

The flight back was quiet. We all probably were reflecting on what we’d experienced. I was thinking about our state’s MLK Commission and all the promise it holds.

A lot will be said and celebrated this week in commemoration of King and his life. Let’s pay attention.

And then let’s go about doing what each of us can, in our own way, to promote King’s legacy and bring about the change that young, 39-year-old sought before he was taken away.

Your thoughts?

The Bryant Archive

Budget onion

Call to post

New Year with no new taxes

Republican General Assembly should support black heritage, MLK programs

Trent Lott must resign as majority leader

Public health: our bounden duty

Towards a free market in higher education

Tax reform is overdue

Hear them roar

Referendum on taxation

What did Godwin do?

Gilmore and Sullivan

Warner's judges

Eastern stars

The wreck of old No. 39

It'll be Goode in the Fifth

The Wilder gamble

The politics of water

On Labor Day, coal miners and being a Republican

Shadow responsibilities

A time for all Virginians to pull together

The people versus the powerful in Northern Virginia

A media double standard?

Warner's California Ways

Bill Howell: the Un-Wesson