by Billy Graham
Our goal was to reach out to as many people as possible in all kinds of situations—many of whom would never come to one of our Crusade meetings.
Howard Jones, a gifted black pastor from Cleveland who joined our Team about that time, also held dozens of meetings throughout the metropolitan area. When one detractor claimed that very few blacks were attending the Crusade services, Dan Potter had a very careful survey made; he discovered that the proportion was almost identical to the city’s demographics. At the same time, we wanted to do more to encourage black participation.
One night civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom I was pleased to count a friend, gave an eloquent opening prayer at the service; he also came at my invitation to one of our Team retreats during the Crusade to help us understand the racial situation in America more fully.
We also held a special service in Madison Square Garden one Saturday afternoon for Spanish-speaking people, the first time I had spoken through an interpreter in the United States. At each service, Willis Haymaker arranged special sections for the handicapped— the blind, the deaf, and those in wheelchairs. Willis’s warmth, prayers, and depth of spirituality contributed as much as anything else to our effectiveness in New York.
Most days began to follow a routine pattern. Charlie or Cliff usually appeared at my hotel room or talked on the telephone with me early to go over the day’s schedule. I often spoke three or four times a day in addition to the Crusade service in the evening—perhaps a luncheon with business leaders, a visit to a university, a meeting at the United Nations, a gathering in someone’s home designed to reach out to neighbors or friends with the Gospel, a tour of the Bowery, with its tragic clusters of men whose lives had been wrecked by alcohol. Since New York also hosted scores of conventions, I often was invited to speak to them. Opportunities seemed limitless, and our Team—augmented by a number of well-known ministers, including Paul Rees, Tom Allan, and Samuel Shoemaker—spoke in almost every kind of situation. Some of our Team, Grady especially, seemed to be going all the time.
One day Ruth and I attended a Father’s Day luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where I was honored as Father of the Year in the field of religion. I had the opportunity to meet Mickey Mantle, the great baseball player. I sat down beside him, and we got to know each other for the first time.
Another day we had lunch with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and his wife, Ruth; his preaching on “the power of positive thinking” had made him familiar to millions. Mrs. Peale did a magnificent job heading up the women’s prayer groups for the Crusade, and Dr. Peale was warmly supportive of the meetings. Although our emphasis in preaching differed, I found him a deeply committed believer with a genuine concern that men and women give their lives to Christ.
Another memorable luncheon took place about ten days into the Crusade, at the Long Island estate of Jane Pickens Langley, a leading socialite whose husband had been president of the New York Stock Exchange. Investment banker E. F. Hutton sent his chauffeured limousine to get Ruth and me, along with my sister Jean and her husband, Leighton Ford, whom she married in 1953. Mrs. Langley had about 50 guests for lunch; an additional 150 joined us afterward for a meeting on the spacious lawn. The house itself was a well-maintained early-American structure. Ruth, who loves antiques and old architecture, wrote in her diary, “A place like that makes me right weak in the knees.” The gathering was a veritable Who’s Who of New York society, with familiar names such as Vanderbilt, Whitney, Paley, and Cushing sprinkled among the guests. We ate outside, then adjourned to the area on the lawn where chairs had been set up for the guests.
I had not realized until we arrived that I was expected to speak, but at the appropriate moment I took about twenty-five minutes to explain what an evangelist was and why we had accepted the invitation to come to New York. I then spoke on the meaning of the Gospel and answered questions for over half an hour on everything from the Crusade’s finances to the meaning of Christ as the way of salvation. Two people came up afterward to say they had already gone forward at the Madison Square Garden meetings. One of those was Eleanor Searle Whitney, whose exuberant personality, vibrant testimony to faith in Christ, and unforgettable hats made her a favorite of our Team.
That same night, a Saturday, we broke our usual pattern; the meeting was scheduled for Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, in the borough of Queens. I went over there straight from the Langleys, but as the meeting began, we realized that the stadium was directly under the flight path for planes landing at LaGuardia Airport. Erling Olsen immediately called the control tower, and by the time I got up to preach, the flight path had been shifted enough to enable us to be heard.
Almost without exception, however, I refused to take engagements in the afternoon, often lying propped up in bed, concentrating on the evening sermon and preparing myself spiritually for the challenge of preaching. In fact, it has almost always been my custom during Crusades to lie down for a couple of hours before each meeting to rest, think, and pray. About an hour before I am to leave I have a sandwich and usually a cup of tea. Those who have not spoken or preached to any great extent may not realize how demanding and exhausting speaking can be, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Many nights in New York I would leave the podium drenched in perspiration and be barely able to undress when I got back to my hotel room. My resolve to keep a daily diary flagged; the last two entries were two weeks apart; and then I finally gave up.
Shortly after the Crusade started, our Methodist associate evangelist from England, Joe Blinco, and other Team members took responsibility for speaking to the people in the counseling room, where inquirers were directed after the Invitation. Normally, I liked to meet with the inquirers, but I already could sense that I was going to have to guard my physical strength.
In some ways, the most important outcome of those first weeks in Madison Square Garden was our decision to broadcast the Sat-urday night service live across the nation over the ABC television network. My old friend Charles Crutchfield from Charlotte, who managed a television station there, urged us to consider the idea. Leonard Goldenson of ABC, who had helped us several years before with The Hour of Decision, agreed to carry the program for four weeks in June, until the scheduled end of the Crusade on June 30.
The cost seemed astronomical—$50,000 per week—but we sensed that God was leading us to step out in faith, trusting Him for contributions to cover the expense. The New York committee was doubtful about the experiment; but I called my friend J. Howard Pew, and he agreed (albeit reluctantly) to underwrite up to half the amount if it became necessary; and we signed the contract.
This wasn’t our first experiment with television in connection with the New York Crusade; and in that connection, the name Mel Dibble comes up. He had a national variety program emanating every Saturday night from Cincinnati. His mother had been a wonderful Bible teacher.
Once when I spoke in Cincinnati, Mel and his wife, Ruth, were brought by a friend to the meeting, which was already full. As they turned to leave, a stage door opened and someone recognized Mel, calling him by his stage name, Mel Martin. He invited the group in and seated Mel on the platform behind Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, much to Mel’s embarrassment. At the conclusion of the meeting, Dr. Barnhouse challenged Mel on his commitment, but Mel said he needed to leave immediately.
Dr. Barnhouse persisted, convincing Mel and his wife to stop by our hotel. By the time the three of them got there, Grady and I were already dressed for bed. We talked, though, and Mel came under conviction—but then said he needed to leave. I challenged him further: “God loves you and has a purpose and plan for your life, but you must surrender your life to Him.”
In response Mel did surrender his life to Christ. Dr. Barnhouse, an extremely conservative man, became so emotional that he grabbed Mel and hugged him. Mel ended up in excruciating pain. The fountain pen in his pocket was being crushed into his ribs!
During the New York Crusade, Mel hosted a daily fifteen-minute, late-night television pro
gram with other Team members in the New York area, and listeners were invited to call in at the close of each telecast. We had thirteen or fourteen telephone lines set aside for counseling, and calls routinely came in until two or three o’clock in the morning; indeed, Team members often stayed up all night taking calls following those telecasts. In the first two weeks of the Crusade, Cliff Barrows announced on The Hour of Decision that one hundred and fifty people had indicated they were committing their lives to Christ through the telephone counseling.
“We know we cannot solve all of life’s problems in one phone call,” Betty Lowry told the Journal-American a week into the Cru-sade, “but we do know of cases where we’ve been able to help.”
Cliff was a whirlwind of activity, not only leading the choir every night and acting as the Crusade’s genial and enthusiastic master of ceremonies, but also overseeing many of the special projects and programs we were doing, including The Hour of Decision.
On Saturday, June 1, we aired our first ABC telecast. We were up against two of the most popular programs on television, The Perry Como Show and The Jackie Gleason Show. Network officials were surprised when the Trendex ratings came in a few days later; the Herald Tribune said the program “provided the ABC network with its highest rating to date for the time period opposing the Como and Gleason shows.” It then quoted an ABC executive as saying that “the rating means that approximately 6.5 million viewers watched Dr. Graham, enough to fill Madison Square Garden to capacity every day for a whole year.”
Response from viewers was quick in coming. “We’re still averaging over 10,000 letters a day,” I wrote to Dr. Bonnell in July, after the telecasts had been going for several weeks. “Many of them are from ministers testifying that new people are turning up at their churches and that attendance for July is higher than at any [previous] time.”
Furthermore, although we spoke only briefly on the air about our need for money to continue the broadcasts, contributions from the very first more than covered the costs.
Altogether we had fourteen live telecasts during the summer as the Crusade was extended, with some 35,000 favorable letters the first week alone, many of them from people who had made a decision for Christ right in their own homes.
“I have begun to feel that perhaps we are holding the Madison Square Garden meetings almost entirely so we could have this telecast,” I wrote in my diary a few days after the first one. “Madison Square Garden is a world-renowned stage from which to speak to America.”
The Crusade initially had been scheduled to end on June 30, but with the meetings running at capacity (or beyond) almost every night, the Crusade committee quickly decided to extend it by three weeks, with a closing rally planned for Yankee Stadium on July 20. From my standpoint, the decision to extend wasn’t so easy; by the end of those first six weeks, I was already physically depleted.
I also had run out of sermons and was having to prepare a new one every day. Some nights during those later weeks, I sat on the platform and prayed silently, “O God, You have to do it. I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.” And yet when I stood up, all of a sudden the words would begin to come—God giving strength and spiritual power in a way that could not be explained in human terms.
The final service in Yankee Stadium on July 20 was truly unforgettable. The stadium was jammed with a record crowd of 100,000 people, with another 20,000 outside who could not get in. The heat was fierce—93 degrees outside and 105 degrees on the platform—and how anyone (including me) managed to concentrate is still beyond my imagination. Vice President Nixon came and sat on the platform with us, extending greetings to the audience from Pres-ident Eisenhower. That was the first time a national political leader of his prominence had attended one of our Crusades.
At that point we faced the decision whether or not to extend the services yet again. A few committee members thought we should not continue. Yankee Stadium was a fitting end, they felt, and anything else would seem like an anticlimax. Noting that hundreds were still coming forward, Dan Potter said to Charlie Riggs, “How can we stop when a new church is being born into the kingdom of God every night?”
“The main points against continuing concern the climax and dangers to our reputations,” I told the committee. “Pentecost was a great climactic experience, but the followers of Jesus didn’t stop until they were thrown out of the city. Calvary was the greatest climax in our history, but the Lord didn’t stop there. As far as our reputations are concerned, that should not be a vital point. Christ made Himself of no reputation.” After much prayer, the committee voted to continue.
“I, too, had certain doubts about continuing . . . but in my period of prayer I could not get any peace about closing even though I am sure the crowds are going to drop off . . . dramatically,” I wrote to George Champion a few days later. “Yet for some unknown and mysterious reason I believe the Lord would have us carry on.”
I was not an accurate prophet, as it turned out; crowds in the Garden continued almost without interruption. When the next deadline approached, the committee had little trouble in deciding to extend the Crusade for as long as Madison Square Garden was available; that was until the Labor Day weekend.
So many people were coming forward that we found we were not equipped to process the number of decision cards we were getting. A former Air Force colonel, Bob Root, was called in to reorganize the effort, using mainly volunteers after every service. His efficiency set the pattern for all our Crusades in the future.
An event this size had its own share of problems—some sad, some humorous.
Once during the early weeks, we had to warn in the press against phony “Crusade workers” who were going door to door in a couple of areas of the city to solicit funds for the Crusade. (We have never raised money in any Crusade by that method, relying instead on the local finance committee to raise the necessary funds.)
Several hours before the service was to begin on another night, a janitor found a note claiming that a bomb had been planted inside the Garden. The police were called immediately, but they found no bomb.
One night burglars broke into the Crusade office and stole about $2,000—a first in our Crusade experience, and one that we would rather have bypassed.
On another evening, a drunk began ranting during the service. Grady and Leighton Ford were dispatched to ease him out, but in order to reach him, they had to go out onto a fire escape high above the streets; once they did, they found themselves locked out. An usher finally responded to their banging and let them back in. Now within reach of the poor inebriate, they convinced him to leave. But when Grady and Leighton came back inside, another man with a rather wild-eyed look was standing in the aisle with a dozen Bibles in his hands, telling them that God had told him to preach that night instead of Billy Graham. Eventually, they persuaded him that he had it wrong; perhaps, they suggested, he was supposed to preach the next night. He left satisfied and apparently never returned.
The closing event for the New York Crusade was a massive rally in Times Square on Sunday evening, September 1. Police blocked off all the surrounding streets, increasing the space available to listeners. I had not prepared a sermon, so I took what I saw on the Broadway theater marquees and applied the words to the Gospel.
The crowd was tremendous. The first estimate sent out over the wire was 200,000 people. Radio commentator Paul Harvey put that same figure out over the air. When I got back to my hotel, I called a good friend of mine at one of the newspapers to ask what he thought the figure was. More like 75,000, he said, and I responded that that seemed about right. Life magazine, whose photographers took pictures of the crowd from a number of vantage points, counted the people in their photographs and came up with 60,000; but they admitted later that they had missed one crowded street entirely.
Whatever the exact figure, it was a fitting end to the longest Crusade we would ever hold. Altogether, more than 2 million people attended the Crusade meetings and other events during the sixteen weeks we were in New York,
with more than 61,000 inquirers (in addition to the 35,000 who wrote to us indicating a decision as a result of the telecasts). A million and a half letters flooded our Minneapolis office in response to the television broadcasts alone—an influx so great that George Wilson had to expand our staff and equipment rapidly.
What was accomplished?
On the surface, of course, the mammoth city of New York seemed unchanged, as I was the first to admit to the press. But beneath that surface, many people had been touched by the message of the Cross, and any evaluation had to begin with the countless lives that were changed by an encounter with the living Christ. The stories of dramatic conversions were virtually endless.
One night a plainly dressed woman stood in the inquiry room with tears running down her cheeks as she asked Christ to come into her life. When her counselor asked if there was anything else she wanted to share, she replied that she was very afraid of her son. “He drinks a lot,” she said, “and I’m afraid he may beat me when he finds out I’ve become a Christian.” Before the counselor could speak, a voice nearby called out, “It’s okay, Mom. I’m here too.”
One evening, among the hundreds coming forward were a priest and a prostitute.
Another night a man from Little Rock, Arkansas, named Jimmy Karam came to Christ. His picture had been in Life magazine because of his active opposition to the civil rights movement, but his life was changed as Christ’s love replaced the anger in his heart.
The wife of a French diplomat wrote us after coming forward: “The joy, the thrill of Christ. I just didn’t know you could be so happy.”
A wealthy man accepted Christ and began bringing anywhere from 20 to 40 guests a night to the meetings, even buying them dinner at a restaurant beforehand.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Bible sales were up dramatically in New York City during the Crusade. It also noted that the owner of a bar near Madison Square Garden had sent four of his bartenders on their vacations early because his business had declined so much.