Predictably, Jewish leaders, many of whom had professed great admiration for Graham, expressed disappointment, dismay, and disgust at these remarks. According to staff members close to him, Graham immediately saw the implications of these revelations and quickly issued a statement saying that, although he did not remember the conversation, he deeply regretted what he had obviously said and insisted it did not reflect his feelings toward Jews. He noted that he had long sought to build bridges between Jews and Christians and would “continue to strongly support all future efforts to advance understanding and mutual respect between our communities.” In a more extended statement, issued a day or two later, he said,
I cannot imagine what caused me to make those comments, which I totally repudiate. Whatever the reason, I was wrong for not disagreeing with the President, and I sincerely apologize to anyone I have offended.
I don’t ever recall having those feelings about any group, especially the Jews, and I certainly do not have them now. My remarks did not reflect my love for the Jewish people. I humbly ask the Jewish community to reflect on my actions on behalf of Jews over the years that contradict my words in the Oval Office that day.
Much of my life has been a pilgrimage—constantly learning, changing, growing, and maturing. I have come to see in deeper ways some of the implications of my faith and message, not the least of which is in the area of human rights and racial and ethnic understanding.
Some Jewish leaders as well as others who had been taken aback by the tapes accepted his apology, recalling that he had been a strong supporter of Israel, had urged Soviet leaders to allow Jews to emigrate to Israel, had assured Jewish leaders in New York that he would not be targeting Jews for conversion during his 1991 crusade there, and, more recently, had criticized his fellow Southern Baptists for announcing a special campaign of evangelism aimed at Jews. They also noted that his remarks on this occasion stood out as virtually unique in his known oral or written statements.
Although not all were convinced by such arguments, it seems plausible that, just as Billy Graham moved from acceptance of segregation and male dominance to a firm insistence on racial integration and equal opportunity for women, and from denunciation of all forms of socialism to a more flexible political stance, he had also grown beyond whatever validity he had once assigned to anti–Semitic stereotypes that were more widely held and voiced in the general culture in 1972 than was the case three decades later.
Graham’s later life had become quiet, as disease, accidents, and age kept both Ruth and him confined mostly to Little Piney Cove or hospitals, except for brief periods when he emerged to hold crusades—in Dallas/Fort Worth, San Diego, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. Despite delays because of health and fears that he might not be able to handle the rigors of such outings, he rallied repeatedly and, in virtually every case, drew record crowds as multiplied thousands turned out for what they reasonably expected would be their last chance to hear the fabled evangelist.
It was fitting that the final crusade of Graham’s career, in June 2005, was in New York City, the scene of his most memorable American crusade, the 1957 marathon in Madison Square Garden. He had hoped to return to the Garden, for nostalgia’s sake, but realization that it could not possibly hold the expected multitude forced a shift to Corona Park in Flushing Meadow, the site of the 1964–65 World’s Fair. Death had continued to winnow the ranks of Billy’s family, friends, and associates—Montreat pastor and friend Calvin Thielman died in 2002; Walter Smyth followed in 2003, as did old friends Johnny and June Cash and beloved brother Melvin Graham; and Stephen Olford died in 2004—but the core platform team was there. Cliff Barrows, age eighty and nearly blind from macular degeneration, looked robust and was in fine voice and spirit, though direction of the 1,500-voice choir had been surrendered to Tom Bledsoe. George Beverly Shea, age ninety-six, was still able to sing “How Great Thou Art,” the song he had introduced to America at the 1957 Crusade, with remarkable volume and vibrancy. (Three years earlier, in Dallas, he had said, “I think I sounded better at ninety.”)
In the weeks prior to the event, reporters who interviewed the aging evangelist commented on the toll taken by disease, failing sight and hearing, and two serious falls that had hospitalized him for long periods in 2004. He seemed feeble, they said, his voice sometimes barely above a whisper, a weak echo of the clarion instrument that had been his trademark, and he seemed at times to grope for words. At a press conference two days before the crusade, however, Graham seemed visibly and audibly revived. His voice had grown noticeably stronger, and his answers came without hesitation or imprecision. Newspapers continued to report that he would be able to sit on a high stool behind a specially built pulpit and that Franklin would stand ready to take over if his father were unable to finish a sermon. They need not have worried. Though he remained offstage in an air-conditioned tent until minutes before he was to preach, and proceeded to the platform slowly, using a walker and with Franklin supporting him at his side, Billy Graham was ready.
When his time came on opening night, his snowy mane flowing down to his collar, the venerable old evangelist accepted the tremendous standing ovation for a few moments, then signaled the audience to settle down. Never one to shed tears, in part because of a tear-duct limitation, he said, “I have stars in my eyes. I can’t see you very well just yet.” That he should be moved is understandable. Arrayed before him like sheep on a thousand hills, the huge crowd—attendance for the three nights topped 230,000—may well have been the most ethnically and culturally diverse crowd ever to attend a Billy Graham Crusade and perhaps as diverse a large audience as ever assembled anywhere.
As Graham spoke, his voice was clear and strong, little different from other crusades in the previous decade. He stood throughout all three sermons, using the stool only during the invitation. The sermons were short—about fifteen minutes, with the exception of the last afternoon, when he spoke at greater length on the Second Coming—but the response was, one last time, impressive, as nearly 10,000 people streamed forward in response to the familiar call, “I’m going to ask you to come. . . . Come now,” and the encouraging strains of “Just as I Am.”
After the New York Crusade, Graham spent most of his time either at Little Piney Cove with Ruth or traveling to the Mayo Clinic for treatment of his various ailments, newly including an aggressive form of macular degeneration. Although he was unable to withstand the rigors of even a shortened crusade, he did make one-night guest appearances at Franklin’s festivals in New Orleans and Baltimore in 2006. In April of that year, he battled illness to appear at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University to receive the George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service. Despite being mostly offstage, however, the venerable evangelist was not forgotten. Newsweek profiled him in a thoughtful cover story and Time reporters Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs interviewed him extensively for a book, The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House. Graham also achieved distinction as apparently the oldest person to hit the best-seller lists, with the publication of The Journey: How to Live By Faith in an Uncertain World. And on May 31, 2007, his status as an eminent figure was confirmed yet again as the nation’s major media converged on Charlotte for the formal dedication of the Billy Graham Library and Visitor Center, where the Mayor of Charlotte, the Governor of North Carolina, and former Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton lauded Graham for his contributions to the world and for the personal spiritual guidance and moral example he had provided them over decades.
The complex, sharing space with BGEA headquarters, was expected to attract 250,000 tourists a year. The grounds have a rustic quality that echoes the rural setting of Graham’s original home. The handsome two-story brick structure itself, which had been moved from its original Park Road location just four miles away to Jim Bakker’s PTL Christian amusement park in Fort Mill, South Carolina, was repurchased and reassembled on the new site. The main attraction, ho
wever, is the library, a designation that is something of a misnomer. Unlike presidential or other special-purpose libraries, it is not designed to be a research facility; although it contains some of Graham’s personal papers, most of his archives remain at Wheaton. The library’s major functions are to serve as a memorial to the evangelist’s life and ministry; as an evangelistic tool, since guests are repeatedly exposed to presentations of the Gospel; and, not insignificantly, as a way to keep people informed about and loyal to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Visitors enter the library through a forty-foot-high cross-shaped portal in a huge barn that recalls Billy’s early days on the dairy farm. They are met there by a mechanical talking cow named Bessie, designed to engage the attention of children. Inside, visitors watch a video of people asking the great life questions Graham sought to address during his long ministry, together with highlights from that ministry. They then move through display rooms that—using realistic sets, photos and artifacts gathered over a lifetime, and a variety of media—recreate key episodes and facets of the evangelist’s life: the 1949 Los Angeles Crusade; his use of radio, television, and movies; his response to such issues as Communism and racial strife; his relationships with eleven U.S. presidents; the great international conferences for evangelists at Lausanne and Amsterdam; and regularly updated information about current BGEA ministries. One room is devoted to Ruth’s life, both as a young girl in China and Korea and as devoted wife and mother in one of the world’s most famous families.
Early reaction to the venture was mixed. Numerous observers regarded the talking cow as inappropriately hokey; others found it a fitting reminder of Graham’s dairy-farm origins and a charming way to introduce the evangelist and his message to children. Some viewed the enterprise as glorifying the evangelist instead of the Christ he preached. Graham himself was said to have resisted the project at first, claiming he did not want a monument to himself. Franklin and members of the BGEA board assured him that the library tour would have a strong evangelistic dimension, which it emphatically does—virtually every exhibit involves pointed exposure to the gospel Graham preached, and the tour ends with a montage, taken from crusades over the decades, of his offering the invitation to repeat the Sinner’s Prayer and meet with counselors awaiting outside the cross-shaped exit. With that understanding, Graham relented. “When it was presented as an ongoing ministry and people would have the opportunity to be won to Christ,” he said, “I changed my mind.”
The sharpest and most public controversy arose over whether the complex would also contain the graves of Billy and Ruth Graham. It had long been assumed that the Grahams would be buried at the Cove, but Franklin and at least some members of the BGEA board thought the library would be more appropriate. Indeed, plans had been made for the tour to end in a garden that would serve as their final earthly resting place. When Ruth learned of the plan, however, she would have none of it. Supported by Ned, at least one of his sisters—an exact count was difficult to obtain—and crime novelist and lifetime family friend Patricia Cornwell, Ruth adamantly insisted that she intended to be buried in the mountains where she had raised her children and that “she hopes her husband will join her there.” She underscored her determination by signing a notarized statement, witnessed by six people, stating that she expected Billy to stand by their agreement. “My final wish,” it said, “is to be buried at the Cove. Under no circumstances am I to be buried in Charlotte, North Carolina.”
The dust-up drew wide, if brief, attention after the Washington Post published a detailed account of the family dispute, quoting Ruth as having dismissed the library complex as a “circus” and “a tourist attraction.” Franklin defended the library as an appropriate burial place and said that his father had approved of the plan. He lamented the opposition from his siblings, conceded that his parents should have the last word, and observed that he was preparing both sites. A few days later, he would say only that a decision had been reached, but that the family had agreed not to discuss it any further.
The indomitable feistiness that Ruth displayed as she talked about her burial could not mask the fact that she was indeed dying. Finally, aware that she had reached the end of her earthly road and in consultation with her family, she asked to be taken off artificial life support. On June 14, 2007, surrounded by her five children and her husband of nearly 64 years, she died, at age 87. Two days later, a great cloud of witnesses turned out to express their love and respect as the cortege bearing her body traveled from the funeral home in Asheville, along U.S. Highway 70 past her beloved Cove, through the streets of Black Mountain and the narrow roads of Montreat, to Anderson Auditorium on the campus of Montreat College.
At the service, attended by more than 2,000 people and carried live on local and cable television as well as the Internet, the congregation sang, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”; George Beverly Shea sang one of Ruth’s favorite hymns, “In Tenderness He Sought Me”; and Ruth’s older sister, Rosa, charmed the audience with amusing stories of their childhood in China. Each of the Graham children spoke briefly, blending reminiscence with evidence of the faith she had instilled in them. Daughter Ruth noted that early in her life their mother had chosen Christ as “as her center, her home, her purpose, her partner, her confidante, her example, and her vision, and we can all make that choice today.” Ned read a Puritan prayer that Ruth had often requested as part of their daily devotions in recent years. GiGi, who said she was losing her best friend, told of standing at her mother’s bedside in the last days as “she looked past us into what I believe was eternity,” then read a poem, “Time to Adore,” that Ruth had written about hoping she would ascend to heaven slowly rather than “in the twinkling of an eye,” so that she might have “time to adore” both what she was leaving and the “joy unspeakable” that lay in store. Franklin drew laughter with stories of Ruth’s trying to catch a rattlesnake with a marshmallow fork and of rousting him out of bed by pouring a can of cigarette butts and ashes on his head, but stressed that her belief in the Bible and in Jesus as the Son of God was her most important gift to her children. “I thank you, Mama,” he said, “for your example, for your love, for your wit, for your humor, for your craziness. I love you for all of it, and I’m going to miss you terribly.” More serious by temperament than her siblings, Anne noted their mother’s love for their father, but said even that paled in comparison to her love for Jesus and for God’s Word. She then read from Romans 8, the same passage she had read to Ruth on “the morning she went to heaven, to our Father’s house.”
Throughout the service, Billy, his white hair still long and full, had listened pensively from the front row. He had not been scheduled to speak, but decided he did have something to say. Helped to his feet by two aides and clutching his walker, he thanked people for coming and noted the presence of a large contingent of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “As you have already heard,” he said, “she was an incredible woman.” Nodding toward the simple wooden casket, aware that an inmate at Louisiana’s Angola prison had made a matching one for him, he added, “I wish you could look in that casket, because she’s so beautiful. I sat there a long time last night just looking at her and praying, because I know that she’ll have a great reception in heaven.” In a statement released earlier, he had said, “Although I will miss her more than I can possibly say, I rejoice that some day soon we will be reunited in the presence of the Lord she loved and served so faithfully.”
At the close of the service, the Graham children stationed themselves at the major exits from the auditorium, to greet and visit with all those who had come to honor their mother. Their father had said that he wished he could greet them all as well, but apart from his diminished strength, he would soon be accompanying Ruth’s body to Charlotte, where she would be buried the following day in the memorial garden at the Billy Graham library.
Even in death, Ruth’s personality shone through. Her headstone reads, “End of Construction—Thank You for Your Patience.”
Some closest to him predicted that Billy’s grief at Ruth’s death would hasten his own, but it did not. Age continued to take its inexorable toll, further degrading his eyesight and hearing and largely restricting him to his home except for visits to his doctors in Asheville, outings he sometimes used to have lunch at TGI Friday’s or to get a corn dog at the Sonic drive-in. As he was able, he wrote the book Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well, a thoughtful book about aging (published in 2011). He followed the 2008 presidential campaign on television and welcomed Republican candidate John McCain to his home. A temporary health episode forced cancellation of a similar visit with Barack Obama.
Graham himself gave no public indication of his preference between the candidates and said, “I’m not making any endorsements, and I’m staying out of partisan politics.” Franklin also professed not to be offering an endorsement, but noted that the differences between the two candidates were substantial and “the choice Americans make in November will affect our nation for years to come.” The mass mailing that contained that observation included a picture of Senator McCain seated between Billy and Franklin and a picture of Franklin with Fox News journalist Greta Van Susteren, who had accompanied him on his trip to North Korea. As had often been the case in previous elections, the implication was not difficult to divine.
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