A vacation day and relaxation come to mind on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but the Ames City Auditorium will be full of activity Monday when local residents honor King with essays, speeches and dramatic interpretations.

Dwight Herold, a fourth-grade teacher at Meeker Elementary School, will help sponsor the 17th annual educational forum on Martin Luther King Jr.

The event will begin at 9 a.m. Monday at the City Auditorium, 515 Clark Ave., and finish about 2:45 p.m.

The theme this year is “Portraits of Character,” Herold said. The event is focused on children but open to the public, he said.

“The kids are looking at heroes and the sentence from the Martin Luther King Jr. speech, `I have a dream . that all men are created equal,'” Herold said.

“[The kids] are looking at what character traits heroes have.”

The day will consist of several events, including a welcome from the mayor, essays read by the students and performances from the Des Moines East High drama club, Herold said.

The Langston Hughes Players will also perform a black history presentation.

The forum, which Herold said is the seventh or eighth held in Ames, is funded by a grant from the Ames Education Foundation.

“[Our] goal is to look at the philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. and why he was wanting for all peoples to get along in this world,” Herold said.

“The students are looking at how they can be better people and how they can emulate heroes.”