As you honor the contributions Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made to our society on this day of observance, remember that in addition to being a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a master orator, and a cornerstone of the Civil Rights Movement, he was a human being first. He was a husband, a father and first, a son — a child of Alberta King. And while you may not think of her or see her in the stories told of Martin, her influence was significant to him being the figure he was. As he once wrote, she was “behind the scene setting forth those motherly cares, the lack of which leaves a missing link in life.” She was in the background, but the foundation of the King family.