Looking back on 48 years
The last surviving member of Billy Graham’s original team shares his experiences working with the famous pastor.
EAST COBB — Henry Holley, 90, of East Cobb, spent 48 years working for Billy Graham, America’s premier evangelical preacher. For Holley, Graham was a pastor, a mentor and a dear friend. Graham died Wednesday in his North Carolina home at the age of 99, and Holley said that makes him the last surviving member of Graham’s original team. But don’t tell him you’re sorry for his loss.
“Billy said one time, ‘One day, you’re going to wake up in the morning, and you’re going to read that Billy Graham is dead,’” Holley said. “He said ‘Don’t you believe it. He’ll be more alive today than he was before because he’ll be in heaven with Jesus.’ And that’s exactly right … He’s in heaven today with his beloved Ruth, who died about 10 years ago. And someday, that’s where I’m going. My beloved is in heaven now for a year and a half. I’ll be going there one day myself, and what a day of rejoicing it will be.”
Crusades
Holley spoke to the MDJ on Wednesday from his East Cobb home, where the walls are covered with photos and memorabilia from his time as Graham’s special assistant. One of his favorites shows Holley and Graham on a stage in Seoul, South Korea. Behind the two smiling men is a crowd of 1.1 million people, attendees of one of Graham’s “crusades,” his term for the preaching events that drew millions of believers to stadiums in cities all over the world. Over the years, over 200 million people attended one of Graham’s crusades.
Putting these events together was Holley’s job. He would fly into the cities about a year in advance and work with local preachers to handle all the logistics. Holley
was mostly responsible for cities in Asia, though he also organized events in Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Helsinki and more.
“There is a small community of believers in each of the cities in Asia that wanted to invite us to come,” he said. “We would only go where we were invited. Once the invitation was received, Billy Graham would pray over it and decide whether or not to accept, and then we would move in and start the preparation work.”
Holley first met Graham while in his 18th year of what would become a 22year career in the Marine Corps. After impressing Graham with his volunteer work preparing for a crusade in Washington, the pastor offered the Marine a full-time job.
“I said ‘Oh my goodness,’ I was so flattered and overwhelmed by that wonderful invitation,” Holley said.
Holley did not accept immediately because he had two more years to serve before he could retire with full benefits. After that, the Vietnam War kept him from leaving the service for two more years, but he was immediately welcomed by Graham upon his retirement from the military.
Stay humble
With Holley’s help, Graham’s influence spread throughout the country and the world. He spoke and prayed with numerous U.S. presidents and received countless awards and honors for his charity work. But despite his growing fame, Holley said Graham always remained humble.
“He was always very simple in his presentation,” Holley said. “He was one of the greatest leaders
I have ever known. He never aspired to be famous. He knew that God had called him to be an evangelist, and that’s all he wanted to do. He just preached a simple message, that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. … He knew that it was nothing that he had, it was all God’s.”
Holley gave the example of a disagreement during the lead-up to a crusade in Hong Kong in 1975. Graham had told Holley to schedule a meeting with local preachers, but the day before the meeting, Graham said he needed to change the plans. A good friend was opening a new hotel and asked Graham to dedicate it.
Holley said he tried to convince Graham to keep his original meeting with the pastors, but Graham didn’t want to hear it.
“He said ‘I don’t care, I’ve given my word, and that’s what I’m going to do,’” Holley said of the argument they had in Graham’s Hong Kong hotel room.
Later that day, at a ceremony on the crusade grounds, Graham’s car pulled up next to Holley.
“He saw me and he stopped, got out and came over to me,” Holley said, tearing up. “He said ‘Henry, you were right, and I was wrong. Please forgive me. I will be with the pastors.’ He gave me a hug. That was a tender moment. It shows the integrity of him. … It shows a lot about his character, and I love him very much. I served with him for 48 years, and it was a great privilege, a real joy.”
Keeping clean
Holley said Graham would go to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Holley said Graham would request an IRS audit every year. He specifically requested his assistants not to rent him Cadillacs or other fancy cars because he said it would not look good for a servant of God.
The 90-year-old laughed as he recalled the time he had to inform Graham that Korean President Park Chung-hee had given him a Cadillac to ride in while he was in the country.
“He said, ‘Under those circumstances, I’ll ride in a Cadillac,’” Holley said. “But that was the only time I know of that he’d ridden in a Cadillac car. It just shows you how simple he was and how true.”
Holley said Graham always asked his assistants to enter his hotel rooms before him “to make sure that there was not some blonde in the closet that would jump out and hug him and a photographer would take pictures of it. He was very, very careful. He’d never be in a room, be it an office or in his hotel room, with another woman other than family members. He would never ride in the backseat of a car with a woman sitting next to him that was not his wife or his children. Just the whole image that he portrayed was one of integrity.”
Holley said a big part of Graham’s success came from his skill at adapting to the new technology of television to get his message out to large audiences.
“He was smart enough to recognize that this was a medium that would reach thousands and thousands of people, and so he was very much aware of using every available legitimate and legal means to proclaim the gospel,” Holley said. “He did that on radio, on television and in person.”
But for Holley, Graham’s legacy will not be about the technology he used or the ministry he built, but the message he delivered and the millions of lives he touched.
“The people that heard him, his explanation of the simple gospel and made a decision to follow Christ, I think that’s his legacy right there,” Holley said. “He’s had every award that can be given to a person. He humbly accepts it, but he gives all the glory to God because he is nothing except a messenger. He is just proclaiming the message that Jesus Christ preached when he came to earth 2,000 years ago.”