Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham

by Billy Graham

  True greatness is not measured by the headlines a person commands or the wealth he or she accumulates. The inner character of a person—the undergirding moral and spiritual values and commitments—is the true measure of lasting greatness.

  Some years ago now, Ruth and I had a vivid illustration of this on an island in the Caribbean. One of the wealthiest men in the world asked us to come to his lavish home for lunch. He was seventy-five years old, and throughout the entire meal he seemed close to tears.

  “I am the most miserable man in the world,” he said. “Out there is my yacht. I can go anywhere I want to. I have my private plane, my helicopters. I have everything I want to make me happy. And yet I’m miserable as hell.”

  We talked with him and had prayer with him, trying to point him to Christ, who alone gives lasting meaning to life.

  Then we went down the hill to the small cottage where we were staying. That afternoon the pastor of the local Baptist church came to call. He was an Englishman, and he too was seventy-five. A widower, he spent most of his free time taking care of his two invalid sisters. He reminded me of a cricket—always jumping up and down, full of enthusiasm and love for Christ and for others.

  “I don’t have two pounds to my name,” he said with a smile, “but I’m the happiest man on this island.”

  “Who do you think is the richer man?” I asked Ruth after he left.

  We both knew the answer.

  40

  At Home

  Reflections on My Family

  One day, Ruth noticed that little Bunny—I think she can only have been about three or four at the time—had more coins in her little red pocketbook than her weekly allowance allowed. She commented on this to Beatrice Long, who had begun helping her. Beatrice suggested that she watch the front yard the next time a car or bus stopped. Ruth did and was appalled to see Bunny walk up to the gate with her little red pocketbook over her arm. All she did was smile at the people. But with that smile and the little red pocketbook, the inevitable happened: the tourists slipped her some coins. Ruth quickly put a stop to that!

  Bunny’s harmless little exploit amused us, of course, but it also pointed out an increasingly troublesome issue for us: how to raise a family in the glare of constant public scrutiny.

  In the early years of our marriage it was not a problem, of course. Two years after Ruth and I left Illinois to live in North Carolina (while I was traveling with Youth for Christ), we managed to buy a little house on the Presbyterian conference grounds of Montreat, two miles from the town of Black Mountain. Montreat was a small, closeknit community, mostly summer houses with a sprinkling of year-round residents, including a number of retired ministers and missionaries—a perfect place for us. The price of the house was $4,500, and it was located right across the street from Ruth’s parents’ home. It was really a summer house with a large lot and a stream; Ruth remodeled it, and it became our dream home.

  It also was the home where most of our children spent their early childhood. As I have mentioned earlier, Gigi was born in 1945 while I was away. Having missed Gigi’s birth, I was determined to be home during the births of our other children, and I will always be grateful that this was possible. Anne was born in 1948, and Ruth (always known to us as “Bunny”) in December 1950. Every family should have a Gigi, Ruth often said—a child who is as heartstrong as she is headstrong. Gigi loved to manage things, especially her two younger sisters as they arrived. Gigi, actually timid inside, would think up mischief and then assign gentle Anne to carry it out. Bunny was the quiet one, whimsical, always well-behaved, the perfect third child. She had a wistful little face and a delightful sense of humor. When the boys were born—Franklin in 1952 and Ned in 1958—our family was complete. I was even in the delivery room for Ned’s birth, an unforgettable experience. Each little personality gave Ruth and me a different joy, and a different challenge.

  But as our ministry expanded and became well-known, we began to experience serious problems with keeping our privacy. Several denominational conference centers were located in our area, and from time to time the attendees (and other tourists) would seek out our home. Occasionally, buses would even stop on the roadway, and curious people would pour into our yard. When this happened, we had to close the curtains hurriedly (or even crawl across the floor) to avoid prying eyes. Often they called out our names, asking us to come out and pose for photographs, and so on. Some pressed their faces against the windows to see inside. A few even took chips of wood from the rail fence or picked up pebbles as souvenirs. People meant no harm, I am sure, but it was disruptive, to say the least, and made a normal family life difficult.

  It became evident that our family needed more privacy, especially with my being gone so much. Mike Wyly, business manager of the Montreat Conference Center, knew of a sizable piece of property up the mountain that had a couple of old cabins on it. Two families lived there, but Mike felt they would be willing to sell. He had a Jeep, which was just about the only way up that rough road. On the ridge lay the giant remains of old chestnut trees that had perished because of the chestnut blight years before. The rest of the woods had been culled for salable timber and had been logged off. Now most of the mountain was covered with pine, oak, and poplar.

  “You should have a place where you can get away,” Mike said on the way up.

  “I’d like to, Mike, but I don’t know what in the world we’d do with it. Besides, we don’t have that kind of money.”

  The property itself covered about one hundred and fifty acres. The cost was around $13.50 an acre, which sounded exorbitant to us.

  We went back down the hill to pick up Ruth. As soon as she saw Little Piney Cove, as she named it, the wheels began to spin in her mind about what she could do with such a beautiful place.

  As I was leaving for Los Angeles, I told Ruth I would leave the decision about the mountain property up to her. While I was away, she arranged with Mr. Hickey down at the Black Mountain Northwestern Bank, which already held the mortgage on our present house, to borrow the money.

  As soon as the deal was closed, Ruth got to work on house plans, determined to create a homey Appalachian log-and-frame residence. She scoured the surrounding area to find deserted cabins whose logs and planks might be salvaged. (No one wanted old log cabins then.) Ruth also acquired some quality lumber for a very reasonable price from a Victorian mansion that was being demolished.

  Exactly where to put the house became a subject of much debate; there were only a few possible spots. The one we finally selected had a magnificent view. There was a spring that never went dry, we were told, so we fed it into two reservoirs, which resulted in our having plenty of water.

  “Before you build that house,” recommended a friend, E.O. Spencer, a hotelier in Jackson, Mississippi, “I suggest you get an architect to at least look it over.”

  We thought that was a good idea, since much of the property was steep and the ground might not be stable.

  “I have a man who works with me on my hotel-building project,” said E.O. “He has a lot of experience with land that shifts.”

  We agreed, and he sent his man, Joe Ware, an outstanding architect from Mississippi, to Montreat.

  Ruth wanted to build on a level area below the ridge line; in fact, the builders had already cut into a hogback and made a ledge where they thought we could build.

  “You can’t do that,” Joe told us in no uncertain terms, “unless you put pilings down to the bedrock.”

  We agreed, and after the pilings were sunk into the ground, a concrete slab was poured. Nine months later, we had a log-and-frame house that fitted the Appalachian mountain scenery, with smoke curling picturesquely out of the stone chimney. Ruth loved it and filled it with antiques she picked up at auctions, secondhand stores, and junk shops.

  In the forty years since, the place has seen “a heap o’ livin’ ” and has stood solid through all kinds of storms—internal as well as external. Ruth made it a safe and happy home for the children and a real
refuge for me. She is satisfied just to be able to live within the embrace of those memory-mellowed walls, welcoming family and friends.

  Our house on the mountain solved the problem of family privacy once and for all. Home was a refuge for me, a place I could truly relax. For that reason, we tended not to have guests when I came home from a long trip. Ruth knew that I needed rest and family time, as well as study time. But whenever I leave Montreat, privacy once again becomes a problem. I am recognized almost everywhere, and I am approached constantly. By nature I am a shy person, and I don’t enjoy going out much.

  But when I do go out—for example, to a restaurant—I am sometimes discovered, often (it seems) just when the meal has been served. Although hearing testimonies and meeting new people is an honor and an encouragement, it does have its drawbacks! A person comes over to shake my hand, and then another one to ask for an autograph, and then another one who wants to share a problem, and so on. Not a few times, after all the gracious conversation is done, I have found that my companions have finished their meals and mine has grown cold. This means that as a family, we can seldom enjoy a meal out together unless we request a private room. I remember being on vacation with our children once in Vero Beach, Florida. After we had been seated in the motel restaurant, a long line of people gathered to greet us, making it impossible for us to finish our meal.

  We got used to the problem of dealing with intrusions, while being careful not to cut ourselves off or to keep ourselves from being open to people and their needs, even when it was inconvenient. More than once I have been on an airplane or sitting in a restaurant, returning from an exhausting trip or wanting to relax, and have had someone come up to share a personal problem or heartache with me. I always have tried to be gracious and to see it as another opportunity God was giving to help in whatever ways I could.

  A more implacable problem for my family and me, however, was my constant travel. The only answer was to try to make our times together as normal as possible, and to concentrate on my family as much as possible during the times I was home. Nevertheless, as our children grew, the preaching Crusades occupied me, at times almost to the exclusion of family claims.

  This is a difficult subject for me to write about, but over the years, the BGEA and the Team became my second family without my realizing it. Ruth says those of us who were off traveling missed the best part of our lives—enjoying the children as they grew. She is probably right. I was too busy preaching all over the world.

  Only Ruth and the children can tell what those extended times of separation meant to them. For myself, as I look back, I now know that I came through those years much the poorer both psychologically and emotionally. I missed so much by not being home to see the children grow and develop. The children must carry scars of those separations too.

  Recently, my children have told me that I have probably been too hard on myself. They remember vividly the times of fun we all had when I was at home. Gigi recalls how I used to invent games, especially one called “Spider,” and how I played Rook with them, a card game learned from their grandparents, the Bells. Whenever I was home, I took them to school or met them when the schoolbus dropped them off in the afternoon, just so I could be with them as they went up the mountain toward home.

  I now warn young evangelists not to make the mistakes I did. But Ruth reminds me that the situation is different today. There are many more evangelists and far more Christian programs on television and radio, so perhaps the need for constant travel is less necessary. When I started years ago, I was responding to an urgent need in the best way I knew how. And God has been faithful.

  God’s ideal for the home is to have both the father and the mother available to their children throughout their growing years. But sometimes separation can’t be avoided. Military obligations, or employment transfers, or missionary assignment, or jury duty—even prison sentences—necessarily disrupt the ideal pattern. If the cause is as irreversible as incurable illness, divorce, or death, the pain is all the greater.

  Given our own family situation, I have only respect and sympathy for the courageous and committed single parents who for a while (or for a lifetime) have to carry the burden alone. The secret of Ruth’s survival was in her commitment—not only her marriage commitment before God of her love for me, but also her ministry commitment of the two of us to the Lord’s purpose for our lives together. And Ruth will be the first to say that she loved her part—staying home with the children.

  Our children could not possibly have missed their daddy nearly as much as I missed them and their mother when I was away. I wanted Ruth to be with me as often and as long as possible. I’m afraid I sometimes applied a lot of pressure, urging her to join me, which only added to her stress. Before she agreed to come across the Atlantic and join me for part of the All-Scotland Crusade in 1955, I wrote her impassioned, impatient reminders.

  Ruth did come to Scotland, and she brought Gigi with her. She was nine years old then and could appreciate the visit to another country. The other children stayed with their grandparents.

  Back at Montreat, whenever I had to leave, we gathered to say good-bye. We held hands and prayed. As I boarded the train, or later the plane, my heart would be heavy, and more than once I drove down the mountain with tears in my eyes.

  Maybe it was a little easier for the girls; they experienced their mother’s constancy and shared so many of her interests. And of course, Dr. and Mrs. Bell, Ruth’s parents, were just across the street (and later down the hill). But the boys, with four women in the house, needed their father at home. Coming as the fourth child and my namesake, Franklin especially may have craved my companionship.

  During the lengthy Madison Square Garden Crusade in 1957, Franklin was five. Back home, Ruth listened to his daily bedtime prayer before tucking him in. One night, after he thanked God for me and others of the Team in New York, he closed with, “And thank you for Mommy staying home.”

  It sounds angelic. But the girls’ theme song around the house, day in and day out, was “Mama, get Franklin!” On Valentine’s Day that year, she wrote the following item in her journal:

  Four full-blooded little Grahams. I feel this A.M. it’s gotten quite beyond me. They fight, they yell, they answer back. Breakfast is dreadful. Franklin woke me at 4:15 thinking it was time to get up. . . . And when I did get up at 6:15, so did Anne and Franklin, and fought during the time I have with the Lord alone. Now they’ve gone off to school looking nice enough (for once) and with a good breakfast but with the scrappiest of family prayers. Only a longer blessing and their last two weeks’ Bible verses yelled each above the other. Grumbling, interrupting, slurring one another, impudent to me. So now they’re off, I’m in bed with my Bible thinking it through—or rather, trying to.

  What I missed! And what Ruth missed by not having me to help her.

  Whenever I did get home for a short stay between engagements, I would get a crash course in the agony and ecstasy of parenting. If Ruth had not been convinced that God had called her to fulfill that side of our partnership, and had not resorted constantly to God’s Word for instruction and to His grace for strength, I don’t see how she could have survived.

  Another entry in her journal:

  Unlovingness and peevishness for any reason are inexcusable in a mother. Weary little hearts, eager for love and praise, unsure of themselves, wanting desperately to look nice and be accepted, and receiving unending correction, nagging, tongue-lashing—how can any child flourish under it?

  With this in mind, we did all we could to encourage the children and give them memories of life together as a family that would be warm and happy.

  We have always been animal lovers, and we have had a succession of dogs who have been with us both as loving pets and loyal guards. A few of them have been real characters.

  Years ago, when I was preaching in New England, I read a piece in a newspaper about the Great Pyrenees dogs; they are similar to St. Bernards, only white. I called the place that bred them
and paid $75 for one we named Belshazzar. I had the dog shipped from Massachusetts to North Carolina, where the whole family fell in love with him. He was the biggest dog we’d had up to that point, loyal and loving, but he was a one-family dog and had little use for anyone else.

  We had a Great Dane named Earl that I really liked, but he always seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Maybe the fact that all five of our children had arrived by then, and that we had a couple of other dogs, contributed to Earl’s problems. The veterinarian suggested we take him to a dog psychiatrist in New York City. We, his family, would be required to go with him. Apparently, only group therapy would help! We decided to let Earl work out his anxieties through exercise instead.

  We also kept sheep when the children were small. Gigi and I were up on the mountain one time, picking apples. When the ram set his sights on the same apples, I tried to shove him off, but he managed to knock me down. I tried to get up three times, but he knocked me down each time, and going down the embankment I must have hurt my leg. When Earl saw this, big coward though he was, he managed to drive the ram off.

  I was scheduled to preach at the Polo Grounds in New York City two or three weeks later, with 80,000 expected. My orthopedist said I had a very deep fracture in my knee and must have a cast and walk with a cane.

  I went to Hollywood not long after to speak at a charity dinner emceed by Frank Freeman, president of Paramount. On my way into the dinner, I ran into Jimmy Stewart and his wife, Gloria. She had just broken her leg skiing and had a cast and a crutch. So we limped in together—only to find that the dinner had been scheduled partly to get me on the live television program, Ralph Edwards’s “This Is Your Life.”

  The strongest and most controversial dog we ever had was Heidi, a short-haired St. Bernard from the St. Bernard Pass. We were staying in Switzerland at the time, and we picked her up when she was just a few weeks old. Once when she was on the upstairs porch, she fell off, breaking a leg. When Ruth tried to help her, she bit Ruth (as a wounded dog will). But from then on she was the most protective of all our dogs. She grew so big that when she leaned against a small Volkswagen, she put a dent in it. She also had a nasty habit: she liked to bite tires. Once she flattened three out of the four tires on a visiting telephone company truck.