Bristol priest recalls hearing "I Have a Dream" speech in person

By JACKIE MAJERUS
Press staff
BRISTOL – As a college student in 1963, the Rev. Stanley Kemmerer rode a bus from Vermont to Washington, D.C. on a "lark" and heard one of the most famous speeches of history.
It changed his life.
Kemmerer, the priest in charge of Trinity Episcopal Church in Bristol, took part in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington and heard his historical "I Have a Dream" speech.
Monday, Kemmerer spoke at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Bristol, telling the story of his life-changing journey.
Kemmerer said he was home for the summer and "minding my own business" in his small town in Vermont when a fellow parishioner asked him to attend the march.
"I like to travel. It sounded like a lark," said Kemmerer. "Why not? I said yes."
It wasn't until his parents expressed concern that he would be traveling to the South for a demonstration that he began to get a little scared, he said.
But parish leaders were going, and his parents allowed him to go along. On the bus, the mood was one of being part of a larger movement, Kemmerer said.
"Yes, there was apprehension, but there was excitement and hope," he said, adding that in retrospect the night may have felt like the one experienced by the villagers around Lexington and Concord in April 1775 as they waited for the Redcoats to arrive.
Nothing in Kemmerer's life prepared him for the experience he had in Washington.
"My town, my college, my home parish and my world were lily white," said Kemmerer, who said he knew then how to "talk the talk" but not how to "walk the walk."
On that hot, sunny and humid day in Washington, the young Kemmerer was impressed with the civility that carried the day.
"The day was not what I expected," said Kemmerer. "The violence we feared did not occur."
Still, Kemmerer said, "It was wall to wall people."
As it turned out, to hear the speech, Kemmerer and some of his traveling companions had to listen on the radio inside their bus.
"I remember the words. I remember the emotion. I remember the people," said Kemmerer.
King's speech, said Kemmerer, was "profoundly honest, yet free of malice."
It showed the tremendous power that one person has to make change, according to Kemmerer, who said King's speech and the march for jobs and freedom was his "introduction and conversion to walking the walk."
A few years later, as a student in Berkeley, Calif., Kemmerer said, things weren't so peaceful anymore. He smelled teargas, crossed military checkpoints and encountered the National Guard, all on American soil.
His experience at the march on Washington, Kemmerer said, helped prepare him for protests against the war in Vietnam, for work on Chicago's South Side and for work in the ministry.
King's speech, Kemmerer said, was "a major influence on my preaching, teaching" and on his belief that religious convictions and ideals such as peace, justice and equality must be accompanied by action.
Forty five years after that sweltering summer day in the nation's capital, Kemmerer said he was struck that his young man's "lark" would place him "at the epicenter of history."

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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com