Community members, mayoral candidates and faith leaders met at St. Mary's Hospital on Monday to celebrate and honor the life and works of Martin Luther King Jr.
The group enjoyed prayer services and punch, as well as a performance from the Lincoln University Voice Ensemble.
"It is a wonderful coming together of people in the community with our own employees in memory of Dr. King," said Peggy VanGundy, SSM Martin Luther King Committee member for nearly 12 years. "It helps all of us to really keep his memory alive and promote the things he lived for and died for, equality and justice for all."
She also mentioned the prayer services were how that particular SSM health center was celebrating the holiday, while other hospitals and health care centers in the SSM system honored King in different ways.
The group was first welcomed by SSM President Brent VanConia, who shared his thoughts on voting rights and racial tensions between the black community and law enforcement.
"Dr. King's message was about expanding voting rights throughout the nation, and it seems like many states are trying to implement laws that are trying to make this more difficult," he said. "Whether the minority is red or blue, Republican or Democrat, we need to ensure that a minority group is not implementing this system and allowing it to dictate the laws of society. We need to be doing everything possible to make voting easier and maintain the integrity of the system."
He also mentioned one of the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," that King was known to practice. VanConia asked the crowd to seek first to understand before being understood and to ask themselves how they can further King's dream and message of hope.
"All of us are deeply disturbed by the recent shooting and deaths of young black men and children," VanConia said. "While I am a big supporter of the police and justice system, there are far too many situations that I can not understand."
The guest speaker for the day was Jim Gearhart, one of the chaplains for SSM. Gearhart has led and planned the Martin Luther King Jr. Day memorial celebration for 11 years, and is planning to retire from SSM in February. Gearhart spoke to the crowd about King's goal of having a beloved community where all people live in peace.
"Martin Luther King said of the movement he led that our goal is to create a beloved community, and this will require change," he said. "Our mutual love and respect are the tools to build a peaceful, just society where all people of every color, every religion and every economic level can live side by side in peace."
Gearhart started working within the civil rights movement at a church camp in 1966, he said. He shared stories about forgiveness with anecdotes of a victim of stabbings and shootings who forgave their attacker and a volunteer at a prison whose first order of business was forgiving the man who had murdered his daughter.
"We need encouragement, renewed hope, and we need reminders that love is creative and redemptive; love builds up and unites and hate only tears down and destroys," Gearhart said.