At Age 80, Martin Luther King's Sister is a Legend

When Willie Christine King Farris was born, she was so sickly that when she wasn't crying, her tiny body would violently shake.

Doctors had no answers and her parents, Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Christine King, could do nothing but worry. Then, after two weeks of solid crying, she stopped.

"When I Didn't hear her anymore I rushed into the house and found her wide-eyed and at ease in her body. I just stared. Like that, it was over, just stopped," King wrote in "Daddy King: An Autobiography." "Now, sometimes when I recall those frightening first days of Christine's life, I feel that the illness, as severe as it was, may have strengthened her for the inordinately heavy responsibilities which would become a daily part of her adult life."

Eighty years later, Farris, the first of Daddy King's three children, and lone remaining sibling of Martin Luther King Jr., is still here. Still going strong as the matriarch of the King family.

"Here I am 80 and so many things have happened. You don't question anything, but I wonder why am I the one that is left," Farris said. "God must have me here for something. "

On Sunday, her family and Ebenezer Baptist Church held a birthday party for Farris, whose birthday was Sept. 11.

Holding the party at Ebenezer was fitting. She was born into the church that her grandfather, father and brothers pastored and is one of the longest-standing members of the church.

"Ebenezer is one of her first loves, that church and the people in it," said her other true love, her husband of 47 years, Isaac Farris Sr. "I always say that if she misses a regular service, things are not that comfortable in the Farris household that week."

'Taught us to be humble'In a strange way, Farris' 80th year of life represented an arrival of sorts. She will tell you, as will members of her family, that she chose to spend her life in the background, supporting first her parents, then her brothers and finally her sister-in-law as they shined.

Now, all of them are gone, and Farris finds herself at the head of one of the most significant black families in American history.

"My father and parents taught us to be humble," she said. "That was part of the family way. I never felt the need to push out. Only now, I am getting much more attention because my sister-in-law has gone on."

Farris still winces when she thinks about Coretta Scott King, who died in January 2006. They were like sisters for more than 50 years.

"My brother and I were very close. When he met her in Boston, he knew he wanted me to meet her. Once I met her, we bonded from then on," said Farris, who ran the King Center with Coretta King. "Now that she is gone, I really feel the need to continue and keep in the forefront of what she was about."

Farris' office suite on the campus of Spelman College, where she is a professor and director of the learning resources center, is a study in normalcy.

Farris - a 1948 graduate of Spelman, who still doesn't walk on the college's grass - is teaching one class this semester and working on two books, a children's book to coincide with the opening of the King Memorial in Washington and her soon-to-be published memoirs.

Knowing her story, her memoirs might read like something out of a Greek tragedy or Shakespeare.

Born into special familyShe was born in the Roaring Twenties into what was already one of Atlanta's leading black families.

Her grandfather, A.D. Williams, was the pastor of Ebenezer and the first president of Atlanta's NAACP chapter. Daddy King later assumed control of the church and emerged as one of Atlanta's most powerful black figures, fighting for equal pay for black teachers.

Her middle brother, Martin Luther King Jr., would go on to become the most important black man, if not person, in America. He would win a Nobel Peace Prize before an assassin's bullet would end his life in 1968. A year later, her baby brother, Alfred Daniel (A.D.), would die mysteriously, found face down in the swimming pool of his home.

In 1974, in the very church that her family built, her beloved mother - known as Bunch - would die in a hail of bullets delivered by a mad man.

"She has always been the strength behind the scenes with her family," Isaac Farris said. "Steady and strong in moments of crisis."

It was Farris who traveled to New York with Coretta after King had been stabbed and to Memphis, after he had been killed.

She and her father were the first ones on the scene when A.D. died, and she witnessed her mother's death. And since her father's death in 1984, she would spend the next 22 years quietly deferring all things related to the King family to Coretta.

"She has always been around for everything and everybody," said her daughter Angela Christine Farris Watkins. "Now that the elders in the family have gone on ... she is the one that is left to carry things on."

That became evident on the evening of May 15 when she received a series of three phone calls from her nephew Dexter Scott King.

"I never heard Dexter like that. He said, 'Aunt Chris, Yolanda has fallen, I can't get her to come back. I can't get her to breathe or say anything,' " Farris said. "Twenty minutes later he called and said he was at the hospital. In another half-hour, he put us all on the phone - we had a conference call - and he said he was going to put the doctor on. The doctor said we did all that we could. I could not believe it. That one was ... ."

Isaac Farris Jr. said it was no coincidence that Dexter King called Farris first.

"As the fourth generation starts to exert leadership, she is here to help us through that transition," said Farris Jr., who is also the president of the King Center. "She is playing the same role. That stabilizing force for us all."

Time to travelBut don't feel sorry for Farris. She still has an easy laugh and relishes time with her family, especially her only grandchild, Farris Christine, (the fourth Christine in the family), whom she calls her "Pudding Pie."

The seeds for Farris' own family were planted in the late 1950s when she met Isaac Farris at a wedding reception. He was deejaying when she arrived with a date - an up and coming preacher, whose name is now lost in history.

But the preacher made a fatal flaw. He arrived at the reception and went straight to the kitchen to get something to eat.

"Christine was very striking, and she had a different presence that attracted me. I asked a friend of mine to introduce me to her," Isaac Farris said. "It was difficult for me to take my eyes off her."

He said the introduction became a long conversation as they waited for her date to come back.

"I didn't have a car, so when we got ready to leave, she offered to drop me off at my place," said Isaac Farris. "They were nice enough to take me home."

The two got married in 1960 and had two children, Isaac Jr. and Angela.

Now after 47 years on the Spelman faculty, where she is the most senior member, Farris is thinking about the next chapter in her life.

She is thinking about retirement and wants to finally visit China and Japan and return to London to see the statue of Martin Luther King in the gallery of 20th century martyrs at Westminster Abbey.

"My father always taught us to keep the faith and keep looking up," Farris said. "Through all of the tragedy, I knew that God was in charge. And as I reach this milestone, God is still in charge. I have reached 80. There must be some purpose."