by Billy Graham
During those days, some missionary friends called to say they were sending a DC–6 to Saigon to pick up any Protestant pastors who might want to be evacuated to the United States. I gave them my support. Meanwhile in Saigon, knowing that safe passage out of the country was imminent, the pastors prayed all that night for guidance. Before the plane landed, they had decided it was their duty to stay and minister to the people as best they could, facing whatever persecution might come their way.
One day in 1977, President Ford came to Charlotte to play golf in the Kemper Open. Jim Kemper and I had been acquaintances for a long time, and he had invited me to play with the President in the Pro-Am part of the tournament. We had played together before and had a great time. He was a pretty fair golfer, but people never knew where his tee shot would go. On this occasion, his ball hit one or two people in the crowd. But he was always able to laugh good-naturedly at the cartoons and jokes about his golf game.
I was distracted by the group of reporters who followed us around. That was to be expected, I thought, with the President of the United States as my partner. But when we got back to the clubhouse, the journalists seemed to turn their attention to me and my relationship with Ford and Nixon.
On another occasion, President Ford went to Charlotte to give a speech, and the sponsors asked me to lead a prayer before he spoke. They took me to the platform and Ruth to seats reserved for special guests. A young protester stood in front of Ruth in the packed audience and held up a sign that blocked her view of the President. She reached up quick as lightning, jerked the sign down, and put it under her feet. When he asked her to give it back, she refused. He was escorted away by the police.
Little did she dream that the man would get a lawyer and sue her. It made the newspapers everywhere.
A day or two later, President Ford called her up. “Ruth, you should leave things like that to the Secret Service and to the police!”
Some weeks later, the trial was held and the judge dismissed the charges.
The President called her back. “Ruth, I think what you did was a very courageous thing. Thank you.”
Years later, Gerald Ford admitted to me that he had initially questioned the wisdom of some of my ventures, particularly some of my trips into eastern Europe. He specifically criticized me for going to Romania, which had a poor record in human rights. But when he watched one of our televised reports from there and saw the crowds that had assembled to hear the preaching of the Gospel, he changed his mind.
“When I first read that Billy Graham was going to a Communist-dominated country, I had reservations,” he told one interviewer a few years later. And yet I think Ford came to see the value of that trip: “There is no doubt . . . [Graham] reignited the flame of religious belief and conviction. And that in turn has unquestionably had a political impact on what is taking place.”
The personal rapport Ford and I enjoyed extended to family concerns too. Jerry’s greatest asset was his wife, Betty. Together they reared a fine family. Several times we wrote back and forth about his son Michael, who attended Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (of which I was a board member) and Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Ruth and I tried to work out a visit with Michael while he was living so close, but it never did work out. The President asked me to do something of great personal importance to him, and I let him down: I allowed my busyness to interfere.
When my own security became a problem in some of our Crusades—I had received some death threats—we contacted Chuck Vance; he was at that time the President’s son-in-law and had his own security firm. Chuck and his wife, Susan, had me to their home two or three times for coffee or tea.
Following his presidency, the Fords moved to the Palm Springs area of California. We have not seen them very often, because my schedule rarely takes me to the West Coast anymore.
However, during his presidency, we were invited to several social events in Washington. On one occasion, at one of the dinners during Ford’s presidency, I sat beside Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco. We were chatting, but at the same time I was stalling. I was looking in despair at the elaborate place setting of knives, forks, and spoons. She would surely know the correct one with which to start.
“Dr. Graham, are you watching me?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, caught in the act.
“But I’m watching you,” she said back. “I’m waiting for you to start!”
Another memorable White House visit during the Ford administration was a state dinner in honor of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Big round tables had been set under a huge tent on the lawn. I sat beside violinist Yehudi Menuhin. I asked him how he practiced when he traveled and mentioned in passing that the father of one of my sons-in-law had once rented Menuhin’s house in Switzerland. He asked me about my work, and I told him what I believed and talked about the Gospel.
The Queen made an excellent speech, after which we all filed into the East Room of the White House for the evening’s entertainment, comedian Bob Hope. This old friend and sometime golf partner approached me on the way in.
“Billy, I don’t have anything to say tonight. My mind has gone blank, and I don’t have any prepared monologue as I normally do. Would you mind if I just tell about you and me playing golf? The Queen knows you, so maybe I could get a few laughs from her.”
Knowing Bob, I was never surprised by anything he came up with. That evening he recounted how I would kneel in the sand traps (he claimed), presumably to pray my way out. He described how I would walk on water at those hazards! Yet, he said, he always won. “Would you like to know the secret of my winning?” he asked, glancing at the Queen.
“I cheat!”
He got the roar of laughter he always did.
Before that dinner, I made my way through a reception line in front of the West Wing by the Rose Garden. As I was talking with television commentator Barbara Walters and Elton Rule, then president of the American Broadcasting Company, I was approached by insurance tycoon John MacArthur; he was escorting his sister-in-law, actress Helen Hayes.
“Billy,” John asked, “do you remember that university I wanted to build for you years ago? If we’d gone ahead with it, we would’ve had a great institution by this time. You made a mistake in not accepting it.”
He was referring to an offer he had made some years before to donate a large tract of land in Florida to us and completely build and endow a university—but only if I would be its president.
“John, I don’t think so,” I said. “I was going by what I believe the Lord wanted me to do.”
In the serious decisions of his presidency, I can’t help but feel that that is what a decent and caring Jerry Ford also was trying to do.
Part Six
1977–2007
New Frontiers
26
Openings in the Curtain
Hungary 1977, Poland 1978
At the start of the 1970s there seemed to be little hope that the Cold War would ever thaw. A host of discouraging factors—from the development of frightening new weapons of mass destruction to repeated failures at the negotiating table—only made the gulf between East and West seem wider.
And the door also seemed closed to any further ministry by us in Communist countries. Our visit to Yugoslavia in 1967 had been encouraging, but Yugoslavia was not part of the Soviet bloc, and before long we could not help but wonder if that first visit to a Com-munist country would also prove to be our last.
HUNGARY
During the July 1972 Crusade in Cleveland, Ohio, I met Dr. Alexander S. Haraszti, a Hungarian-born surgeon who practiced in Atlanta, Georgia; in addition to his medical degree, he had a doctorate in linguistics and a degree in theology. He had a brilliant mind and a Slavic cultural background. He once told me that he memorized the New Testament by the time he was twenty-one. He had a photographic memory, it seemed, and yet he was the most voluminous note-taker I have ever met.
In 1956, long before I met Dr. Haraszti, he translated my b
ook Peace with God into Hungarian. Shortly thereafter, he immigrated to the United States. Then, in 1972, he brought a delegation from Hungary to see me during the Cleveland Crusade. He had an obsession, which he considered to be a burden from the Lord, for me to preach in eastern Europe, starting in Hungary and culminating in Moscow.
Alex knew eastern Europe intimately, not only its history but also the unwritten and sometimes very subtle dynamics of how people in that part of the world thought and acted. In addition—unlike most expatriates from Communist countries—he had maintained good relations with church leaders there and also understood Communist policies and protocol. As we developed our strategies for that part of the world, he soon became indispensable.
We also sought advice, of course, from others who were familiar with the church situation in Hungary and eastern Europe. One was our daughter Anne’s brother-in-law, Dr. Denton Lotz, who traveled extensively all over eastern Europe on behalf of the American Baptist Convention (and later became head of the Baptist World Alliance). Another was Joseph Steiner, whom Ruth and I had met while vacationing in the south of France. A native of Hungary, Joe was a missionary with Trans World Radio, beaming Gospel programs into eastern Europe from Monte Carlo, Monaco. As a youth Joe’s goal was to become a member of Hungary’s diplomatic corps, but during the 1956 uprising, he fled to the United States. One night in 1957 he came to the Crusade in Madison Square Garden and gave his life to Christ. He soon realized that God had indeed called him to be a diplomat—as an ambassador of Christ.
A Russian-born couple at Trans World Radio, Rose and Nick Leonovich, also helped us understand the situation in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Our friend Dave Foster, who lived in Switzerland and traveled extensively in Europe, was especially knowledgeable about the churches and parachurch organizations working in the Communist countries, and he passed along their insights.
In April 1977, Alex arranged for Walter Smyth to preach in Hungary. While there they also conferred with officials about a possible visit by me to that country. Alex continued the negotiations, and on August 13, my thirty-fourth wedding anniversary, he hand-delivered to me in Montreat an official invitation signed by the Right Reverend Sandor Palotay, president of the Council of Free Churches of Hungary. We were on our way in two weeks. Remembering the aborted Poland trip, we spent many hours in study and briefings on Hungary before we left. We also did not announce the visit until we had full approval to do so from Hungarian authorities.
Just a few weeks before the invitation arrived, Dr. John Akers had come to assist me on special projects, and immediately I asked him to help on the Hungarian trip. A Presbyterian minister and theologian with a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, John had been a Bible professor and academic dean at Montreat-Anderson College near where we lived.
I felt that there were a number of things about us and our ministry of which Dr. Haraszti might not be aware, such as the possibly negative reactions in America to our eastern European visits. And I knew I was unaware of some of his methods and strategies. Dr. Akers made an effective bridge between us, and I felt that if anyone in our organization could negotiate with diplomatic officials, he was the one.
The common perception in the West was that religious life was virtually nonexistent in eastern Europe and that what little remained had to be carried out secretly and under constant threat of persecution. In reality, though, that period had passed in Hungary. A limited number of churches were permitted, both Protestant and Catholic, although their activities were closely regulated by a government agency called the State Office for Church Affairs.
Despite this slight openness to religious matters, last-minute negotiations for the 1977 visit proved very difficult. Walter and Alex spent the days just before our visit in Budapest hammering out final arrangements, while our small Team gathered in Vienna for final preparations before flying to Hungary—although at this stage we still were not certain the visit would take place. Hungarian authorities were extremely nervous about permitting a foreign evangelist to preach, and local church officials had little (if any) latitude in making decisions without prior government approval.
At no stage, however, did the authorities place any restrictions on what I could preach. We made it clear that I would be preaching the same Gospel message I had preached all over the world and that I would not be commenting on strictly political issues.
At the airport in Budapest, Mr. Palotay’s formal greeting to me included references to peace and trust between our nations. I responded with a reference to Isaiah’s amazement over the “new thing” the Lord was doing (Isaiah 43:19). It also was my privilege to convey personal greetings to the people of Hungary, especially its believers, from President Jimmy Carter, with whom I had talked just before I left the United States.
We had been warned that we could not assume our conversations were secure and that our hotel rooms would probably be bugged, so we were prepared to be circumspect in what we said. When we arrived in Budapest, Mr. Palotay informed us that our entire Team would be housed in a large, old, government-run hotel located on beautiful Margit Island in the Danube River. It was isolated from the rest of the city. Furthermore, he said, Team members would be required to share rooms, “because hotel space in Budapest is at a premium.” Some suspected that the real reason for putting two in a room was to overhear Team members talking among themselves.
The head of the independent television crew accompanying our Team balked at the cramped arrangements and promptly called the modern Hilton Hotel in Budapest, where he had no trouble securing single rooms for his whole crew. When he announced that they would be moving to another hotel, Mr. Palotay informed him in no uncertain terms that if they did, they would be on the next plane out of the country. They stayed.
Our first meeting was in a crowded Baptist church in Budapest. At the end of my sermon, I was puzzled by the unfamiliar sound of numerous clicks; for a minute I thought people were gnashing their teeth at me! Instead the sound was, I discovered, from people cutting off their personal tape recorders. This was the case in all the meetings in Hungary: services were being recorded so that the Gospel could be passed all around the country.
The most memorable Hungarian meeting took place outside of Budapest, at the Baptist-run Tahi Youth Camp on Sunday morning, September 4. Although the authorities had permitted no public announcement of the meeting, even from church pulpits, news spread by word of mouth. Officials had predicted a maximum turnout of 2,000 people. To their surprise—and ours—attendance was at least 15,000 (police reports said 30,000), with people massed on the hillside under the trees. In that exhilarating setting, with Alex beside me as interpreter, I reinforced a double emphasis in my preaching.
First and foremost, as always, was the simple declaration of humanity’s desperate need for a Savior from sin and judgment and of God’s loving provision for that salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. My text was the ever-powerful words of John 3:16. When I gave the customary Invitation to come to Christ, many hundreds responded by lifting their hands.
The other emphasis was my expressed desire to build bridges of understanding between nations. I did not mean simple détente or an uneasy peaceful coexistence. It was not enough, I felt, only to keep our distance from each other, to glare and gesture across political fences that were fragile barricades at best. We needed to get to know each other person to person, as President Eisenhower had advocated, so that we could accept each other in spite of our differences. And religion needed to be part of any cultural exchange program working toward that goal—right along with the arts and education. In my view, the greatest unifying force in the world was the fellowship of Christians, people whose faith in Christ brought them together in the family of God.
By God’s grace, I was able to say things like that privately to certain government leaders in Hungary too. Some of their comments in response took me by surprise. The deputy prime minister told me frankly that he recognized the church could be useful in helping to buil
d a unified and moral society. The head of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers Party, I was told, had even quoted the words of Jesus—“He who is not against us is with us”—when referring to the Christian believers. “I prefer a believer who is a good worker to an atheist who is a bad worker,” the Hungarian government’s secretary of state for church affairs, Imre Miklos, told me.
The Roman Catholic bishop of Pecs, Dr. Jozsef Cserhati, explained to me that the church had accepted the fact that it would not destroy the government, and the government had accepted the fact that it would not destroy the church. (Incidentally, throughout my week in Hungary, I had opportunities for cordial private visits with him and other Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders.)
In addition to the preaching occasions, Ruth and I especially enjoyed getting out among the people. A cruise on the beautiful Danube—it was not blue, as I had always imagined, but the muddy brown of a working river—as guests of American ambassador Philip Kaiser and his wife; a visit to a cooperative farm at Hortobagy, where I felt right at home feeding sugar lumps to the horses and eating goulash (delicious!); a tour of the magnificent Parliament building and a huge electronics factory—these helped give us a feeling for the vitality and warmth of the Hungarians.
We found out to our surprise that there was quite a bit of traffic in Budapest, sometimes leading to jams. We did not expect to see so many trucks and cars, although Hungary had the highest standard of living in eastern Europe.