Neal Washington of Lawton, Okla., son of Iolans Helen and Spencer Ambler, will be the guest speaker at 7 o’clock tonight at Ward Chapel A.M.E. Church’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.
Washington is director of student support services and a former professor at Cameron University. He also commanded an artillery battery for the Army and taught ROTC at Grambling State University. Washington also is completing his last year in a doctoral program in computational systems biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
Washington was raised in Iola and attended Allen County Community College and Wichita State University.
Community members will present the musical portion of tonight’s program in honor of the late civil rights leader.
Proceeds from the event will be divided between the Iola Area Ministerial Association and the Allen County Community College Endowment Association.
He is married to Alice Cheney of Humboldt, who is a retired medical technologist and a graduate of WSU. The couple are members of Union Baptist Church
in Lawton.
