MTTG Joint Venture presented the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation a $1 million gift to support the national memorial honoring the life and legacy of Dr. King. From left to right: Christian E. Jahrling, vice president and general manager, Turner Construction Company; Henry Gilford, president and CEO, Gilford Corporation; Ed Jackson, Jr., executive architect, Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Foundation; Harry E. Johnson, Sr., president and CEO, Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Foundation; Deryl McKissack, president and CEO, McKissack & McKissack; Hilton Smith, senior vice president, Turner Construction; Richard W. Marshall, chief financial officer, Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Foundation.
Companies Pull Together to Make Massive King Memorial By Steve Monroe Special to The Informer
M
y family’s private memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. consists of a handful of color photos from the mid 1950s when -- long before he became world famous -- he gave the commencement address at my uncle’s graduation from BethuneCookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla. Others certainly have their own remembrances in the form of commemorative photos of King, portraits of him in his prime, or photos of the March on Washington, the massed
crowd on the Mall and him speaking that day. Thanks to the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the MLK Memorial Foundation, U.S Congress participation, and public and private donors for getting the project off the ground, and Turner Construction, McKissack & McKissack, Tompkins Builders and the Gilford Corp. for getting in the trenches to get the work done, the whole world will soon have a massive $120 memorial to King on the National Mall for all to see and experience. The foundation has set plans for the official dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National
Memorial in West Potomac Park on Sunday, August 28, 2011, the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s historic I Have A Dream speech. The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial is planned as the first on the National Mall to honor a man of hope, a man of peace, and a man of color. Located on the Tidal Basin, the memorial is to create a visual line of leadership between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, and The memorial will be an “engaging landscape experience conveying four fundamental and recurring themes throughout Dr. King’s life – democracy, justice,
hope, and love” – and features the use of natural elements including water, stone, and trees, according to foundation information. A 450-foot inscription wall will feature more than a dozen Dr. King quotes engraved into granite to serve as a testament and reminder of Dr. King’s humanitarian vision, and include pieces called the “Mountain of Despair” and the “Stone of Hope,” with its 30-foot sculpture of Dr. King. I’m extremely pleased with the how the construction has progressed on the project. Obviously there are challenges on any
MLK-10 august 2011 / Celebrating the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial - The Washington Informer Special Issue
project of this magnitude; however, with the intellectual horsepower that was committed to this project, we were able to resolve the challenges and accomplish the client’s schedule goal,” said Darien C. Grant, the 21-year Turner Construction Company Executive who has overseen the project to completion this year. “I also want to say that the MLK Foundation has done a phenomenal job in organizing and leading the project. If you go back to when they first started planning the project, through preconstruction and now at the
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