Billy Graham dies at age 99
The Rev. Billy Graham, the magnetic, movie-starhandsome preacher who became a singular force in postwar American religious life, a confidant of presidents and the most widely heard Christian evangelist in history, has died at 99.
“America’s Pastor,” as he was dubbed, had suffered from cancer, pneumonia and other ailments and died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina.
More than anyone else, Graham built evangelicalism into a force that rivaled liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the U.S. His leadership summits and crusades in more than 185 countries and territories forged powerful global links among conservative Christians and threw a lifeline to believers in the communist bloc.
A tall, striking man with thick, swept- back hair, stark blue eyes and a firm jaw, Graham was a commanding presence in the pulpit, with a powerful baritone voice. “The Bible says,” was his catchphrase. His unquestioning belief in Scripture turned the Gospel into a “rapier” in his hands, he said.
Graham reached multitudes around the globe through public appearances and his pioneering use of prime-time telecasts, network radio, daily newspaper columns, evangelistic films and satellite TV hookups. By his final crusade in 2005 in New York City, he had preached in person to more than 210 million people worldwide. No evangelist is expected to have his level of influence again.
He was a counselor to U.S. presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. When the Billy Graham Museum and Library was dedicated in 2007 in Charlotte, North Carolina, George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton attended.
Born Nov. 7, 1918, on his family’s dairy farm near Charlotte, Graham came from a fundamentalist background that expected true Bible-believers to stay clear of Christians with even the most minor differences over Scripture. But he came to reject that view for a more ecumenical approach. He was ordained a Southern Baptist but later joined a thenemerging movement called New Evangelicalism that abandoned the narrowness of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists excoriated him for his new direction and broke with him when he agreed to work with more liberal Christians in the 1950s. Graham stood fast. “The ecumenical movement has broadened my viewpoint and I recognize now that God has his people in all churches,” he said in the early 1950s.
In 1957, he said, “I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ.”
His approach helped evangelicals gain the influence they have today.
Graham’s path began taking shape at age 16, when the Presbyterian-reared farmboy committed himself to Christ at a tent revival. “I did not feel any special emotion,” he wrote in his 1997 autobiography, “Just As I Am.” “I simply felt at peace,” and thereafter, “the world looked different.”
After high school, he enrolled at the fundamentalist Bob Jones College but found the school stifling and transferred to Florida Bible Institute in Tampa. There, he practiced sermonizing in a swamp, preaching to birds and alligators before tryouts with small churches.
Graham went on t o study at Wheaton College, a prominent Christian liberal arts school in Illinois, where he met fellow student Ruth Bell, who had been raised in China where her father had been a Presbyterian medical missionary. The two married in 1943.
A 1949 Los Angeles revival turned Graham into evangelism’s rising star. Held in a tent dubbed the “Canvas Cathedral,” the gathering had been drawing adequate but not spectacular crowds until one night when reporters and photographers descended.
When Graham asked them why, a reporter said that publisher William Randolph Hearst had ordered his papers to hype Graham. Graham said he never found out why.
Over the next decade, his huge crusades in England and New York catapulted him to international celebrity. His 12-week London campaign in 1954 defied expectations, drawing more than 2 million people. Three years later, he held a crusade in New York’s Madison Square Garden that was so popular it was extended from six to 16 weeks, capped off with a rally in Times Square that packed Broadway with more than 100,000 people.
As America’s most famous religious leader, he golfed with statesmen and entertainers and dined with royalty. Graham’s relationships with U.S. presidents became a source of pride for conservative Christians who were often caricatured as backward.
Those ties proved problematic when his close friend Richard Nixon resigned in the Watergate scandal, leaving Graham devastated and baffled. He resolved to take a lower profile in the political world, going as far as discouraging the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a founder of the Moral Majority, from mixing religion and politics.
Yet, during the 2012 White House campaign, with Graham mostly confined to his North Carolina home, he all but endorsed Republican Mitt Romney. And the evangelist’s ministry took out full-page ads in support of a ballot measure that would ban gay marriage. His son the Rev. Franklin Graham, who runs the ministry, said his father viewed gay marriage as a moral, not a political, issue.
Graham’s integrity was credited with salvaging the reputation of broadcast evangelism in the dark days of the late 1980s, after scandals befell TV preachers Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.
A longtime Cedartown Police officer and the first female among their ranks who had long since left the force passed away last week. Flora “Flo” Miller, who previously served with the Cedartown Police Department for 20 years and was the first female officer on the force, died at the age of 65 after losing a long struggle with various health issues.
Miller, a native of New Mexico who moved with her husband “Bucky” to Cedartown in 1981, is remembered by those who served with her as not just an upstanding officers, but a great friend.
Among those with good memories of her time with the department is Cedartown Assistant Police Chief Greg Cooper. He said that Miller was one of the finest officers he served with throughout his career.
“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” he said.
Cooper added that her dedication to protecting and serving the community went beyond her service as a police officer. Miller was also a dedicated volunteer, working with children with special needs and suffering from medical conditions at a North Carolina camp.
“That to me shows what kind of person she was,” Cooper said.
Det. Sgt. Steve Rush added that during his time serving with her in the ranks of the Cedartown Po-