By Karen Vance
Enquirer contributor

CLIFTON - For Gwen Robinson and Rabbi Mark Goldman, helping other people isn't a choice. It's a calling.

MLK JR. EVENTS

Thursday March and Memorial Ceremony, 11 a.m., Kresge Auditorium, UC Medical Sciences Building, 231 Albert Sabin Way, E Level. March to King Memorial at Reading Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Keynote Lecture, 12:15 p.m., Otto Budig Theatre at Northern Kentucky University, Nunn Drive. Monday Memorial Walk, 11:30 a.m. Starts at Fountain Square and ends at Music Hall. Commemorative Program, free concert, noon, Music Hall. "March for Peace," 5 p.m. Starts at the Peace Bell, at 9th and Greenup streets in Newport.

The two are this year's recipients of the Martin Luther King Spirit Award from the Baptist Ministers Conference of Greater Cincinnati and the Health Alliance. They will be honored as part of a King memorial march and ceremony at 11 a.m. Thursday at Kresge Auditorium in the University of Cincinnati Medical Arts Building.

"I've always felt that it's not enough to do religion in the church or temple or mosque. You have to take the words out of scripture and put it into action on the street," said Goldman, rabbi of the reform-tradition Rockdale Temple.

Goldman, 64, and his wife, Meryl, have been working on civil rights issues since he was a rabbinical student in the 1960s. He often participates in interreligious and interracial events in Greater Cincinnati as well as pulpit swaps with black ministers.

For Robinson, the president of the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency, helping people was something she learned from her mother at an early age.

"She was a nurse. She turned our neighborhood into a village," she said. "People would come to her for whatever ails them, and they'd talk about their children, their marriage, their lives."

The 56-year-old is in her eighth year leading the Community Action Agency.

"I believe I'm here for a reason ... ," she said. "I'm being led by the spirit, and I couldn't be doing anything else."