KING'S DREAM RESOUNDS ANEW IN OBSERVANCES.

Byline: Mary Beth Alexander and Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writers

Promising to carry on his dream, people throughout the Los Angeles area honored Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday Monday in celebrations rich with song and emotional speeches.

Hundreds gathered at St. John Eudes Catholic Church in Chatsworth, for a two-hour ceremony that included moving gospel hymns and readings from King's ``I Have a Dream'' speech, and ended with the audience singing ``We Shall Overcome.''

``You realize there is a very important voice missing today that hasn't been replaced since he died,'' said James Singletery of Glendale, who attended the event sponsored by the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council.

Representatives from a variety of religions throughout the Valley, from Baptist to Buddhist, called on the audience to remember King's message of peace, and keep alive his hope for a world without prejudice.

``When he fell, all that he had was felled except the dream,'' Rabbi Aaron Kriegel told the audience. ``But, I still have the dream.''

The gathering at the Chatsworth church was among several events held throughout Los Angeles to commemorate King's birthday.

At the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, two programs featured sermons and song.

At Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, about 150 people watched the presidential inauguration on wide-screen television, then discussed how the country's leaders can carry on King's dream.

``We had a good turnout, and I think folks felt strongly the president and Congress need to spend the next four years focusing on some of the issues Dr. King talked about,'' said David Waskow, program coordinator for the Progressive Religious Alliance, which sponsored the event.

In South Central Los Angeles, thousands turned out for the Martin Luther King Day Parade, which was held on the boulevard that bears his name.

``I think we've come a long way,'' said Barbara Avila, a 52-year-old South Central resident. ``But we're still looking forward to achieving what Dr. King tried to get for us. I feel in my heart that things will be better not just for people of color, but for everyone.''

Though a day to spend with family, celebrating and cheering as drill teams and bands marched by, paradegoers said the holiday also is a time to contemplate current problems, and seek solutions.

``It's still a harsh world out there,'' said David Nicholson, 37, of South Central Los Angeles, who, along with his wife, Gwen, 36, took the day off from their maintenance jobs in the San Fernando Valley to watch the parade with their daughter and granddaughter.

Nicholson said violence and drugs in the inner city are the main obstacles parents like himself face in raising their children. It's much harder, he said, for his teen-age sons to survive in South Central than it was for him when he was a teen-ager back in the early 1970s.

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3 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Third-graders from Oak Street School march in a King parade in Inglewood.

(2) The Inglewood High School Band marches in observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday Monday, one of various observances.

(3) Taneika Lathan, 10, waits to march.

David R. Crane/Daily News