A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  By 1950 Graham had experienced notable popular acclaim, won respect in Evangelical circles, and shown that like Finney and Moody and Sunday, he would have no trouble financing his ministry. The key realm he had yet to penetrate was politics, and since much of his preaching featured political themes, he sought to ingratiate himself with political figures with an eagerness that seemed almost desperate. Strom Thurmond’s blessing was his first breakthrough, but it was not his first effort. Early in 1949, in what seems to have been a clear case of overreaching, he wrote President Truman to request a brief visit with him. When the President’s secretary reported that Mr. Truman’s schedule was too packed to permit an appointment, Graham wrote that he understood but asked the secretary to let the President know that “over 1,100 students at these Northwestern Schools are praying daily that God will give him wisdom and guidance” and that “we believe our President to be a man of God. We believe him to be God’s choice for this great office.” While in Boston he told a reporter that his whole ambition was “to get President Truman’s ear for thirty minutes, to get a little help” in spreading the gospel, and he worked hard to satisfy that ambition. He sent a telegram urging the President to declare a national day of repentance and prayer as a step toward lasting peace. After Communist forces invaded South Korea a few weeks later, he sent another wire with the following bit of encouragement and foreign-policy advice: “MILLIONS OF CHRISTIANS PRAYING GOD GIVE YOU WISDOM IN THIS CRISIS. STRONGLY URGE SHOWDOWN WITH COMMUNISM NOW MORE CHRISTIANS IN SOUTHERN KOREA PER CAPITA THAN IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD WE CONNOT LET THEM DOWN. EVANGELIST BILLY GRAHAM.”

  Perhaps feeling that his telegrams had endeared him to Truman, he renewed his request for a personal visit. The President resisted, but with the assistance of Massachusetts congressman John McCormack, Graham finally obtained an appointment for July 14, 1950. When he managed to get the invitation widened to include Barrows, Beavan, and Grady Wilson, the four of them got so excited, Grady recalls, that “we were jumping up and down in our hotel room.” As they puzzled over how to make a good impression on Truman, Grady remembered that newspapers often pictured Truman wearing a Hawaiian sport shirt and white buck shoes at his Key West retreat and suggested they meet the chief executive in bucks of their own. Graham, who already had a pair of the shoes, loved the idea and dispatched Grady to a Florsheim store to purchase three more pairs for his friends. Thus shod, and attired in matching ice cream suits and colorful hand-painted ties that made them look like hospital orderlies at the racetrack, they readied themselves for a visit with the most powerful leader in the non-Communist world. The meeting was scheduled for noon, and Truman’s appointments secretary recommended they arrive a few minutes early. That suggestion was hardly needed. Often nervous and always punctual, Billy had broken his watch and, according to Barrows, pestered his friends for the time “on an average of twice a minute.” When the four awestruck men finally entered the Oval Office, Truman received them warmly, listening courteously to Graham’s call for a national day of prayer and sharing a few observations about the possibility that some kind of police action might be needed to resist communism in Korea. As their scheduled thirty minutes drew to a close, Graham asked the President if they might “have a word of prayer.” The chief executive, not famous for piety, said, “I don’t suppose it could do any harm.” Billy put his arm around Truman and began to pray, Cliff chimed in with “Do it, Lord” and several fervent “Amens,” and Grady peeked to find the President taking in the scene with what appeared to be bemused detachment.

  As the group left the President’s office, a clutch of reporters descended on them, and Graham, unaware he was violating protocol, freely related what Truman had said and acknowledged they had prayed together. He balked when photographers asked him to re-create the pose they had struck, explaining he thought it improper to simulate prayer, but not wanting to disappoint them, he said, “On second thought, my team and I were going to go out on the White House lawn and just give God thanks for this privilege of visiting with the President of the United States. I suppose you could take a picture of that.” The next morning, newspapers all over America ran a photograph of the young innocents, dazzling in their white raiment and poised on one knee like a southern gospel quartet. With typical generosity, Billy described the President as “very gracious, very humble, very sweet,” but the stories and photographs irritated Truman mightily. Washington columnist Drew Pearson reported that the evangelist was persona non grata at the White House, but Graham seemed oblivious to his gaffe. When he sent a thank-you note a few days later, he requested an autographed picture, reiterated his call for a day of repentance and prayer, and let the President know that his was a voice worth hearing. “It is my privilege,” he observed, “to speak to from five to twenty thousand people a night in each and every section in America. I believe I talk to more people face-to-face than any living man. I know something of the mood, thinking, and trends in American thought.” Having established his credentials, he repeated his hard-line position on foreign policy, urging Truman to order “total mobilization to meet the Communist threat, at the same time urging the British commonwealth of nations to do the same. The American people are not concerned with how much it costs the taxpayer if they can be assured of military security.” Graham got the photograph he requested but little else. A few months later, the President curtly declined a request to send a telegram in support of a Rose Bowl rally at which Billy was the headliner, and not until long after he left office did Truman come to regard his erstwhile prayer partner as much more than a publicity-grubbing God huckster. Graham has retold the story of this abortive visit so frequently, often to justify his refusal to reveal the substance of his conversations with other world leaders, that the embarrassment it caused him obviously ran deep. The best analysis, however, came from Grady Wilson who, chuckling and shaking his head as he recalled the incident, offered the uncomplicated but irrefutable observation: “We were so naive.”

  Naivete notwithstanding, Billy Graham had made astonishing strides in less than twelve months, emerging from relative obscurity to become the best-known evangelist of his generation. He scored resounding triumphs in settings as strikingly different as Los Angeles, New England, and Bible-belted South Carolina. And he assembled a team of colleagues who, when it came to evangelistic campaigns, not only knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it but were rapidly gaining the confidence to insist it be done their way. Both the Boston and Columbia crusades had been hampered and ultimately cut short in full flower by the lack of suitable auditoriums. For the Portland, Oregon, crusade, which began in July 1950, Graham persuaded the sponsoring committee, led by an old friend from Youth for Christ, to construct a 12,000 seat wood-and-aluminum tabernacle the size of a football field, but even this proved inadequate. The opening service drew a standing-room-only crowd of well over 20,000, the first week’s attendance exceeded 100,000, and an estimated 250,000 tried to get in during the second week. At times the enthusiasm for the young preacher resembled that associated with movie stars. When approximately 30,000 women gathered for a “Ladies Only” meeting one hot August morning, they tore down traffic barriers, climbed on automobiles, and generally behaved so boisterously that team members had to call police to keep the dear sisters from wrecking the tabernacle. By the time the crusade ended its six-week run, the aggregate attendance exceeded a half million, even by conservative estimates.

  Successful as it was, the Portland crusade’s status as a landmark in Graham’s ministry owes less to what occurred inside the tabernacle than to external developments that happened to fall into place during that period. The first involved Graham’s entry into major-league religious broadcasting. As he contemplated his remarkable success and increasing fame, he naturally considered various means of expanding and extending his ministry. The most obvious route seemed to be through radio or, possibly, the fledgling medium of television. A few months before the second New England tour, when spring was still too raw to attract many
visitors to the New Jersey shore, Dr. Theodore Eisner, pastor of an interdenominational Evangelical church in Philadelphia and president of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), followed what he regarded as an “impression” from God and drove down to Ocean City to spend the night in a cabin he and his son-in-law had rented. The next morning, when he entered a diner in nearby Somers Point, he heard cries of “Doc! Doc!” coming from a booth in the back where Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows, who were attending a conference in the area, were having breakfast. “We were just talking about you,” Billy said. “We want to do something on radio or television, and we don’t know how to do it. We need help.” As president of NRB, founded by the National Association of Evangelicals to protect and promote Evangelical programs, Eisner understood religious broadcasting well and was able to help them sharpen their focus. He also promised to tell his son-in-law, Fred Dienert, an advertising and public relations man, of their interest in developing a program.

  Dienert and his partner, Walter Bennett, specialized in religious accounts and leapt at the chance to work with Graham, but they soon discovered that Eisner had not handed them a neatly wrapped gift. Throughout his ministry, Graham’s pattern would be to pursue a new idea or opportunity with great enthusiasm, perhaps committing substantial money and personnel to its exploration and execution. Then, as he reflected on the time and expense and effort it would require and contemplated visions of failure and embarrassment, he would either retreat, convinced the idea could not possibly succeed, or agree to continue only after assuring himself and others that he would bail out at the first sign of trouble. By the time Dienert and Bennett approached him a few days after the conversation with Eisner, he had already cooled on the whole idea. When they went to Montreat soon afterward with word that the ABC network would offer him a prime Sunday-afternoon slot, Graham remained adamant. Though they assured him the program could originate from any city where his travels took him, he reckoned the demands of a weekly program to be excessive and the cost—$92,000 for thirteen weeks—astronomical.

  The two agents, certain Graham would change his mind, waited for his call, but none came. At first they told themselves he was contacting wealthy friends, trying to raise money for the venture. Finally, with no invitation or advance notice, they flew to Portland to press him for a decision. Graham never liked to transact business during a crusade, and for several days, he refused even to see them. Finally, as they prepared to return to the East Coast, he called them to his hotel room. Dienert recalled that “the room was very unpretentious—a little room with one table and one chair and a single bed. Billy had on a baseball cap and a pair of green pajamas and was walking back and forth, back and forth. He told us some friends had indicated they would do something to help, but nothing definite. Frankly, I think he might have been a little discouraged. We explained to him that if he could raise just $25,000, that would pay for at least three weeks, and contributions from listeners should take care of it after that. Then he said, ‘Guys, let’s pray.’ I have never been in a prayer meeting like that in my life, and I never expect to be in another one like it. You could feel the power of God in that room. Walter got down on one side of the bed, and I got down on the other. Billy knelt at the one chair and started to pray. I can’t tell you all that was in the prayer, but I know this: The pipeline was open. I knew he was talking to the Lord, and I knew the Lord was listening. He said, ‘Lord, Eve got this little house in Montreat. I’ll be glad to put a mortgage on it. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. You know my heart. We don’t have the money, but I would like to do it.’ It was a great prayer, a really terrific prayer! Then Billy said, ‘Lord, I want to put out a fleece. I want $25,000 by midnight.’ Well, I’ve heard a lot of prayers, but I never heard anybody proposition God like that: $25,000 tonight or we don’t go! On the way out of the room, I said, ‘Billy, how about giving the little people a chance?’ And he said, ‘I’ll do it tonight.’ Well, he was drawing 20,000 a night in Portland, so we figured if he got just a dollar apiece, that would be $20,000 and, frankly, if you ask God for $25,000 and he gives you $20,000, that’s pretty close.”

  At the service that evening, Graham’s unwillingness to push the issue seemed almost perverse. He made no mention of a radio program at the time of the offering. When he finally did speak of it, he rested content with noting that “a couple of men are here to see us about going on radio. The time is available; we can let the tobacco people have it, or we can take it for God. If you want to have a part in this, I’ll be in the little room by the choir area after the service tonight.” Dienert sank in his seat, certain “the whole thing was shot.” To make matters worse, a guest preacher sharing the service that evening not only spoke too long but, when Graham gave the invitation, got up again and confessed his own shortcomings at length. By the time he finished, the entire crowd had stood for twenty-five minutes. Dienert thought to himself, “By Golly, can’t somebody make it easier? Who, after standing this long, is going to line up and give Billy another gift?”

  What followed became one of the favorite stories in the Graham hagiography. People did indeed line up, dropping checks, bills, pledges, even a few coins into a shoe box held to receive their offerings. When the money was counted, Billy had $23,500 in cash and pledges for the program. Dienert and Bennett were ecstatic until Graham reminded them, “I didn’t ask for $23,500. I asked for $25,000.” To accept this as a sign from God, he cautioned, might be to fall into a Satanic trap. For the same reason, he refused Bennett’s offer to have the agency make up the difference. As the two befuddled and crestfallen admen sought consolation in the company of Barrows and several other friends at Louie’s-on-the-Alley, a little seafood restaurant favored by the team, Graham and Grady Wilson returned to the Multnomah Hotel, where the desk clerk greeted them with two envelopes and several telephone messages. The two letters were from wealthy Texas businessmen Bill Mead and Howard Butt, Jr., both of whom were avid believers in evangelism—Butt, a supermarket magnate known as God’s Groceryman, had himself been a leading figure in the Southern Baptist Youth Revival movement of the 1940s. Accounts of the number and distribution of checks and pledges vary, but all agree that contributions from Mead and Butt were crucial and that these last-minute gifts brought the total to exactly $25,000. To Graham, not unreasonably, it seemed a clear sign God was calling him to a radio ministry.

  The shoe box full of money posed a problem. Graham learned that if he deposited it in his own name, even temporarily, he would be liable for personal income taxes, and contributors could not claim their gifts as deductions. Probably because they feared a network radio program could easily become a financial albatross, Northwestern’s board felt any such venture should be independent of the schools. Graham called George Wilson for advice, and Wilson offered a simple solution: “You need a little nonprofit organization, with you and your wife and myself on the board, and you can control it.” Graham replied, “Well, get some papers together and come on out here.” Anticipating such a need, Wilson had collected sample incorporation documents from several nonprofit organizations: “So I dictated the articles and bylaws, and took it to a lawyer and had him put in a few commas and whereases. One thing I didn’t want changed was Article 1: ‘To spread the gospel by any and all means.’ Knowing Billy, I knew he wasn’t going to stick just to crusades. So that covered it, and still does: ‘any and all means.’” Armed with the articles of incorporation, Wilson flew to Portland where he joined Cliff Barrows, Grady Wilson, and Billy and Ruth Graham as the charter members of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), a name reportedly chosen over Graham’s strenuous objections. On his return to Minneapolis, George Wilson leased a one-room office near the Northwestern Schools, hired a secretary, and began thirty-six years of day-to-day control of the organization.

  Graham’s film ministry began in Portland as well. A year earlier in Los Angeles, a young filmmaker, Dick Ross, had talked to him about extending his reach through motion pictures. As their first major venture,
Ross produced a color documentary called The Portland Story, later renamed Mid-Century Crusade and widely used to publicize Graham’s ministry and to show potential sponsors how a crusade worked and could benefit churches in their city. Within a year, Billy Graham Evangelistic Films, later renamed World Wide Pictures, with headquarters and studios in Burbank, California, began turning out a steady stream of documentary and fictional films, the latter mostly retellings of broken lives mended by attendance at a Billy Graham crusade. Ross also helped produce Graham’s new radio program, the Hour of Decision, a name Ruth suggested. The first broadcast, originating from the Atlanta crusade in the Ponce de Leon baseball stadium on November 5, 1950, opened with Tedd Smith’s adaptation of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” introductory remarks by Cliff Barrows (“each week at this time . . . for you . . . for the nation . . . this is the Hour of Decision!”), and songs from the choir and congregation. Jerry Beavan described the 10,000-seat steel and canvas tabernacle centered on second base and noted that “where short days ago baseball pitches rocketed across home plate, now the Gospel message is driven home to the multiplied thousands who have been in attendance for every service.” Then Grady Wilson read Scripture, and George Beverly Shea intoned “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story.” These preliminaries over, Cliff Barrows announced dramatically, “And now, as always, a man with God’s message for these crisis days, Billy Graham.”

  True to his billing, Graham began his sermon on an arresting note: “An Associated Press dispatch from Hong Kong in the Atlanta Constitution this morning states . . .” Three days earlier, Chinese troops had entered the Korean conflict, a development Billy managed to inflate into a precursor of imminent world war, possibly involving a hydrogen bomb. Declaring those “crisis days” to be “the most tragic and fateful hour in world history,” he proclaimed that none but the Prince of Peace could bring true and lasting tranquillity to individuals and nations and called on listeners, wherever they might be, “to say an eternal yes to Christ.” Then, after a short prayer, he closed with the signature benediction: “And now, until next week, good-bye and may the Lord bless you, real good.” The team was elated with the smoothness of the production, but perhaps no one found greater satisfaction than Frank Graham, who had driven down from Charlotte to share in his son’s hour of triumph. Frank’s pleasure went beyond fatherly pride; at last, it seemed, he felt relieved of the burden old Brother Coburn had placed on him at the Plank Meetinghouse by predicting he would become a preacher. When an Atlanta reporter asked Mr. Graham when Billy had been called to preach, he told him, “About ten years before he was born.”