Remembering Billy Graham

The news in my hometown of Charlotte is dominated this week by the passing of its most famous son, Billy Graham. Daily tributes and remembrances are punctuated by visits of former Presidents and other dignitaries. He was a relentless savior of souls for Christ for six decades. He was the most successful, best known and most admired Christian evangelist in the world.

I was not saved by Billy Graham. I never attended one of his famous crusades, though I remember watching them on a black and white television with my parents when I was a small child. But I did have a personal encounter with him. One that I have reflected on this week and feel compelled to share.

It was in 1990. I was a board member of the Charlotte World Affairs Council, an organization that I had helped organize several years earlier that fosters dialogue on global issues. Another of our founding members had come up with the idea of hosting an annual dinner to raise funds to allow us to bring prominent speakers to our city. His brilliant idea was to center the event around the presenting of an award to someone from our region who had achieved significant global stature in his or her field.

 Our first choice to be so honored was Billy Graham. Getting him to agree to be lauded at such a dinner, to be present and to speak, was a formidable challenge. He was notably humble and reluctant to exploit his fame or to endorse any message other than the Christian gospel. Through the intervention—divine or otherwise—of mutual friends, we did succeed in gaining his agreement.

As members of the small circle organizing the event, my wife and I were able to meet Billy and Ruth Graham in an intimate setting before the dinner. I have been fortunate to have met many powerful and famous people, but none has had the immediate impact on me that he did. He was gracious and at ease, with conversation skills well-honed by decades of chatting with world leaders as well as just plain folks like us. I am not a particularly spiritual person, but there was something unmistakable spiritual about being in his presence. There seemed a halo of quiet and peace surrounding him. After the black-tie dinner, which was a huge success by all measures, I asked Allie about her reaction and was amazed that she had experienced a similar reaction. She was visibly pregnant with our first child, and we welcomed Billy Graham’s blessing for our daughter.

Another memory that sprung to mind in the wake of all the publicity this week was a vague recollection of reading a quote from Billy Graham to the effect that he not only had no reason to object to interracial marriage but saw it as a way to eventually eliminate the differences between the races. It took quite a bit of Google searching, but it seems my memory is better than I would have thought. In a 1994 interview in Life magazine he said, “Integration is the only solution. We’ve got to be totally integrated--in our homes, in our worship, even in marriage.” I find it truly remarkable given his Southern roots and the times in which he lived and worked that he was steadfastly on the right side of the race issue.

Coincidences loom large in my memory. Only a few weeks after the dinner honoring Billy Graham, I boarded a flight for New York and found myself seated next to Ruth Graham. As we chatted throughout the short trip, I found her fascinating in her own right. Like her more-famous husband, she was charming and a polished conversationalist. We were seated at the front of the plane, and many people boarding recognized her and spoke. She handled her celebrity with grace and patience.

The Carolinas World Citizen Award that was bestowed upon Billy Graham was commemorated in a glass sculpture created by then little-known North Carolina-based artist Jon Kuhn whose work is now featured in museums and private collections around the world. I wonder what became of that piece? At some point in the ensuing years, I recall that it was displayed in the Charlotte airport’s international terminal. Perhaps it is housed today within the vast Billy Graham Library complex here in Charlotte. It will be worth a visit once this week’s throngs have departed.