Irene Delays MLK Memorial Dedication

Dedication ceremony has been pushed back to sometime in the fall

The dedication ceremony for the new Martin Luther King memorial sculpture in Washington D.C.'s National Mall has been delayed because of that pesky storm coming up the east coast, The Washington Post reports. The dedication was scheduled for Sunday, but because the hurricane is expected to land that day, the dedication is being forced to delay the ceremony until September or October. The sculpture opened to the public on Monday, but an estimated 250,000 people were expected to show up Sunday for the dedication ceremony. Even the president was expected to show up. “I’m really disappointed and hurt, really,” Harry E. Johnson Sr., chief executive of the memorial foundation, told the Post. He managed to put things in some perspective though. "It is still a success because we have a memorial," Johnson said. "To say that Dr. King is now on the Mall between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorial[s], you can’t ask for anything better than that. We just didn’t have a dedication; hopefully everyone will understand."