PORTLAND – Not so long ago, Dr. Ian Smith sat down on a park bench in London to reflect on his visit to Great Britain and scribble down some of the local color for an upcoming novel.

Feeling very much a foreigner, the black author’s spirits suddenly soared as his eyes focused on an American flag flying atop the U.S. Embassy.

In a crystallizing second, the pledge of allegiance he had repeated thousands of times as a child, the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Martin Luther King’s peace marches for freedom fused in his mind as Smith stared at his country’s national standard.

Then, against the contrast of the daily routine in the capital of a former enemy of the United States, Smith reached a memorable conclusion.

“Sometimes you have to go away to better appreciate what’s near to you,” he said. “I suddenly understood exactly what that flag meant to millions and millions of Americans before me and what it would mean to millions of those after us. It’s important to sometimes look at life in reverse.”

Speaking to nearly 700 guests Monday at the 24th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast Celebration in Portland, Smith said Americans need to perceive the national holiday in terms of what the slain civil rights leader stood for as much as the greatness of the man himself.

“Today is not a religious ceremony, not a black ceremony, not a white ceremony – it’s an ‘us’ ceremony and it’s a democratic ceremony,” he said.

Smith, a native of Danbury, Conn., who now lives in Manhattan, is a former medical correspondent for NBC News and the health columnist for Men’s Health magazine and the New York Daily News. A physician who has written two medical books, Smith also is the author of the current thriller “The Blackbird Papers.”

American ideals like freedom and equality require sacrifice, and Smith observed that like King, those in the room should ask themselves what they have done to leave a legacy “in the time that was only borrowed for you.”

“Did you try to improve conditions, did you try to make it better?” he asked. “Did you try to make this land a land that, when you’re gone, others will be proud to be part of?”

Smith urged his audience to understand the meaning of what King was trying to accomplish as he relentlessly strove to remind the public that the freedom for which so many had fought was still not enjoyed by all Americans in the mid-1960s.

“The idea behind the civil rights movement was just for those promises to be fulfilled,” Smith said. “It was not a black issue, it was not a white issue. It was an American democracy issue. … Martin Luther King Day should not be marginalized to just an issue of racial equality. I hope people see the bigger picture of what our obligations are.”

Slipping briefly into his role as an advocate on black health issues, Smith pointed out that while the United States was founded on the assertion that all human beings are created equally, medical statistics tell a different story.

He pointed out that in the area of average life expectancy, a male Caucasian can expect to live 75.1 years while a black male’s life span is averaged at 68.8 years. White women live to be 80 on average, he said, while black women usually live to around 75 years of age.

“If we’re all created equal, why don’t we all live the same length of time?” he asked. “Unfortunately, our access to health care is not equal.”

Blacks and whites, Asians and Hispanics, and Jews, Christians and Muslims shared breakfast tables at the Holiday Inn By the Bay, but there was far less bipartisan interaction.

Democrats far outnumbered Republican political figures at the event. Former Green Party vice presidential candidate Pat LaMarche was on hand. Sen. Susan M. Collins briefly joined Gov. John E. Baldacci at the speakers’ table, but was forced to leave early because of travel arrangements to Washington.

The governor told the NAACP members in the audience that they had a lot to be proud of and had built “a legacy that honors all of us.

“Our state is a terrific place to live and our increasing diversity is one reason for that; there is no question that this is true,” Baldacci said. “We will all be as successful as we can be as a state, to the extent that we can continue to be a place that does embrace differences.”