Wading For a King

By Chris Karmiol

March 16, 2004

ATLANTA - Greg Fowler looks like just another guy cleaning a pool. The pool he cleans, though, gets hundreds of visitors a day and none of them come to swim.

Greg Fowler sweeps the bottom of the reflecting pool surrounding Martin Luther King Jr.'s tomb. Photo: Chris Karmiol

Fowler, 46, is the facilities manager at the King Center on Auburn Ave. in Atlanta. For the past six months he's cleaned and maintained the long, multi-leveled reflecting pool surrounding Martin Luther King Jr.'s tomb. Despite spending up to an entire day removing floating leaves and debris from the pool, Fowler considers it a privilege.

"You've got to have that enthusiasm," Fowler said. "I'm coming here to take care of King's monument. Work is displeasing. This is pleasing to me."

He views the maintenance of this five-level reflecting pool as more than a job and more than an honor. Fowler considers it a calling.

"I feel it's a chosen job," Fowler said. "Not of man, but of spirituality."

Sometimes, as if in meditation, Fowler spends extra time cleaning the pool. Fowler found Christ 15 years ago, and was baptized in 1994, he said.

"I feel that I live in the world but I'm transformed," he said. "I'm here physically, but spiritually I'm just totally submissive to the Lord."

Wearing a blue baseball cap, tinted sunglasses, a Martin Luther King pin on his shirt and waterproof boots and overalls, Fowler said that his life has completely changed since he accepted Jesus Christ as his savior.

"Christ is everything," Fowler said. "He's everything everyone's looking for and they don't know it yet. He takes away all those fake salvation things and gives you real salvation in the living, flowing waters."

Fowler's job, or his calling, depending on how you look at it, is to remove floating leaves and other debris and to sweep a constant flow of dirt out from the bottom of a series of sky blue-colored reflecting pools.

Greg Fowler looks at Martin Luther King Jr.'s tomb, which he maintains daily. Photo: Chris Karmiol

The long rectangular pools have five sprays blowing water 10 feet into the air on one side. The water flows down foot-high waterfalls to the lowest pool, where King's white marble tomb sits on a circular red brick pedestal. Across the street is Auburn Avenue, the street on which King was born, and the new Ebenezer Baptist Church, built in 1999.

Fowler said he never expected to be doing this job, but he follows the spirit where it takes him.

"We just come to fill the need of wherever we're needed if we're spiritually connected," he said. "This is where the Lord wants me at this time in my life."

His job is more than work, it's a spiritual connection. Greg Fowler cleans debris from Martin Luther King's tomb and reflecting pool memorial. Photo: Chris Karmiol

The maintenance man is a deacon and president of the choir at the House of Praise, a non-denominational church in Dekalb, Ga., the town he lives in with his wife and three children. He said he respects King not just for his civil rights work, but for his dedication to God. Fowler said he feels a spiritual connection by keeping up King's tomb.

"In essence, yes, it's God's work, he said. "This is about as spiritual as you can get for me, other than working for the Pope."

Even if a job opens up working for the Pope, Fowler said that he's not looking to leave this job anytime soon. He said he's satisfied working at the King center so close to the remains of a great leader.

"Somebody asks who's keeping this up, I can say 'I am,'" Fowler said. "Not too many people who can say that."

Standing ankle-deep in his work, Fowler appeared pleased.

"I feel comfortable here," he said. "It's an overwhelming feeling of serenity, peace, joy. I'm feeling like a millionaire, but ain't got a dime. That's the feeling of joy."

With a smile on his face, Fowler looked back at King's tomb, in the middle of the pool of water he cleans daily.

"It's spiritual, man, it's spiritual," he said.

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