by Billy Graham
“Ron,” I said, forgetful for once of the proper way to address the President, “I think that maybe you ought not to try to go to church for a while. I think almost everybody will understand. Not only are you in danger, but you’re endangering other people. Wait until this thing [his being shot] has quieted down, and until the Secret Service has gotten a little better organized.”
“You know,” I added, “you can have a service here just for the few of you and some of the staff in the theater downstairs, or you can revert back to what Nixon did, having a service in the East Room of the White House. I think most people would understand.”
Eventually, the Reagans did resume going to National Presbyterian Church in Washington. Dr. Louis Evans, who (before Donn Moomaw) had been their pastor at Bel Air in California, made some structural alterations to accommodate the President’s needs. As a result, the Reagans could come in at the rear without disrupting the service and sit in the balcony, unnoticed by the congregation.
Ron did ask my advice on two other matters that I felt had moral or spiritual dimensions, although they also dealt with policy.
First, the Vatican. Reagan was the first American President to appoint a full ambassador to the Vatican. Before he made that appointment, he asked my view. I told him I thought it would probably be a good thing—in spite of a number of potential problems concerning the separation of church and state—and wrote an extended confidential letter outlining my reasons. Among other things, I told him I did not think it necessarily violated the separation of church and state. For whatever reasons, Mr. Reagan went ahead with the plan. Later my letter was leaked to the press. It caused some consternation among my Baptist friends.
Second, in April 1985, both Nancy and Ron were deeply concerned over the furor created when Chancellor Helmut Kohl scheduled them to visit a German cemetery. After accepting the engagement, they discovered that a number of S.S. troops had been buried there, along with thousands of other Germans. Nancy asked if I had any suggestions on how they should handle it.
“Yes, I have one,” I said. “I’d get some top Jewish rabbis and ask them to help your husband prepare his speech.”
I personally called my friend Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee. I understood later that he went to Washington and helped the Reagans. That German visit, instead of being a negative experience, turned out to be a positive one, in my opinion.
Etched indelibly in my memory—and that of every Amer-ican—will always be the March day in 1981 that President Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. I was at home when I learned of it. The first person to call me was Jesse Helms, our senior senator from North Carolina.
“Billy, I think you ought to go up there and be available for spiritual encouragement and prayer.”
About half an hour later I got a call from one of the President’s aides saying that they were unable to locate Donn Moomaw, who was thought to be at a conference in Bermuda. They asked me how soon I could come to Washington. I told them I could be ready almost immediately. I got a private plane to National Airport, where I was met by a White House car.
When I saw Nancy the next day, she was calm, but I could sense the anxiety and concern she felt by the tears in her eyes and the extra hug she gave me. I was reminded again of the great love they had for each other; frequently, I had seen them holding hands or just touching each other, and I knew he depended on her greatly, not only for emotional support and encouragement but also for advice. A few minutes later, Frank and Barbara Sinatra came in. Nancy rehearsed all the events for us from her point of view. Then the pastor of National Presbyterian Church, Louis Evans, and his wife, Colleen, came in. Within an hour, Donn Moomaw and his wife arrived.
We sat and talked together about Ron and got the latest information on him. For the first time, I realized how near death he had come the day before. Before we left, Lou Evans turned to me.
“Billy, I think you should lead us in prayer.”
We all held hands. I prayed as fervently as I knew how, asking the Lord to raise up our friend. During the prayer, Frank Sinatra said amen twice.
I had read that the Hinckleys, whose son shot the President, were Christians; I called them in Colorado and assured them of my prayers too, because I knew their hearts must have been breaking.
When stories later came out about Nancy’s having consulted an astrologer on family and national issues after the assassination attempt, I was amazed. I had never seen her as a gullible or experimental person in her spiritual understanding and could not help but feel it was a momentary lapse caused by anxiety and stress. I called her on the phone at the time and talked frankly to her about it.
“Nancy, surely you didn’t really look into astrology, especially for something as important as the dates when the cabinet should meet.”
“Billy,” she responded, “what you’ve read is only part of the story. It’s 90 percent untrue, but there is possibly 10 percent truth in it,” she admitted. I urged her to seek her guidance from the Lord instead.
A few years later, in 1988 or 1989, we were having lunch at the White House with a group of people. Robert Strauss sat on one side of Nancy, and I on the other. (Bob Strauss was one of the closest friends that I had in the Democratic Party in Washington, and over the years he often gave me very helpful advice.) She confided in both of us that she was going to write a book in response to Donald Regan’s recently published book, which was sharply critical of her.
“Nancy, don’t do it,” I said. “It will turn on you. You don’t need to get back at Regan and these other people who have hurt you. If you do it at all, wait five or ten years when people aren’t so close to it and so tender about it.”
Strauss supported me.
When she insisted that she would do it immediately, I cautioned that she was going to regret it. Both my hunches came true. The book project backfired, to her regret.
Many times when I was with the Reagans, they brought up their daughter Patti Davis. I could see that they were both burdened and sometimes discouraged about their rocky relationship with her. We had prayer for her often. After it was announced that Ron had Alzheimer’s disease, Patti published her book Angels Don’t Die. In it she complimented both her parents, but especially her father, for what he had taught her about spiritual and moral values.
In the forty years since first meeting Ronald Reagan, he has taught me a lot, not so much through words as by example. His optimistic spirit was contagious. I have often been a worrier (if biting my fingernails was any sign), even though I know underneath it all that God is in charge.
But I have always found Reagan’s attitude to be upbeat. I thought that attitude affected the country psychologically and won him much admiration even among his critics. It wasn’t just a stiff-upper-lip attitude; rather, it was genuine cheeriness and good hu-mor—part of his charisma. As a good example, when he was shot he quipped, “I forgot to duck.” That spirit was infectious, and the nation was the better for it.
On June 14, 1989, after his presidential term was over, the Queen of England honored Reagan. I was in England at the time; he called me about thirty minutes after the ceremony.
“Guess what?” he said. “I’ve just been knighted!”
“Well, congratulations, Sir Ronald!” I said.
He laughed. His reaction was a blend of seriousness and humor—grateful for what the honor represented, and yet refusing to take himself too seriously.
After he left office, we stayed close to Ron and Nancy. His life in retirement was packed with travel and engagements and a multitude of responsibilities. Still, loyal friend that he was, he found time to talk to me on the telephone or send me an occasional handwritten letter inquiring about my health and assuring Ruth and me of his and Nancy’s prayers. I have seen them in California from time to time and several times have attended Bel Air Presbyterian Church with them.
I also saw him at the funeral for Richard Nixon on April 27, 1994, where he joined the other former pre
sidents and President Clinton in paying tribute. I could tell, however, that some of the old sparkle was gone, and I was very saddened when they announced some months later that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time, their openness and courage in the face of this debilitating illness have been an inspiration to us all.
While he was President, Ronald Reagan bestowed on me one of the highest honors I could ever imagine. On February 23, 1983, he presented me with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor our government gives to an American, for service to the nation. I felt unworthy of the honor, and still do. But whatever else it means, it will always remind me of the generosity and friendship of a remarkable man and a warm and enduring personal friend, Ronald Wilson Reagan.
30
A New Day Dawning
Romania, Hungary, Russia 1985–1992
Very few people—including me—ever imagined that Communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would collapse almost overnight. For years I had been saying privately that Soviet-style Communism was both unworkable and unnatural and couldn’t last indefinitely. But as we approached the mid-1980s, no one could have predicted that in half a dozen years the Berlin Wall would be torn down and the Soviet Union disbanded.
And yet as we traveled to that part of the world, we were already seeing definite signs by 1985 that change was taking place. I was convinced it was only a matter of time before those first trickles became a torrent.
ROMANIA
On the surface, nothing seemed further from that conviction when we took our trip in 1985 to Romania, a year after touring the Soviet Union.
In 1977 I asked Walter Smyth to go to Bucharest with a humanitarian gift from the BGEA World Emergency Fund to help Romania recover from a disastrous earthquake. While there, he opened the discussion with church and government leaders about the prospect of a visit. Four years later, Alex Haraszti followed up with a series of trips, sometimes traveling in unheated trains during fierce winter blizzards. Conversations also were held with the Ro-manian Embassy in Washington.
One complication was Romania’s human rights situation. In 1975, in an effort to nudge Romania toward a more open policy, the United States had granted the Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status, guaranteeing favorable tariff treatment on goods imported into the United States. (The term was something of a misnomer, since most nations trading with the United States had that same status.) Each year Romania’s MFN status came up before Congress for renewal, and each year some groups contended it should be withdrawn because of human rights violations. The desire to keep that crucial status was almost certainly a major reason why Romania opened the door for us: it was trying to impress its American critics with the freedom it gave (or seemed to give) to religious believers.
Our visit was also complicated by the situation in Transylvania, an area of Romania that had been part of Hungary. The government’s strenuous attempts to integrate the Hungarian ethnic minority into Romanian culture—a process that included suppressing the Hungarian language and Hungarian cultural customs—continued to meet with much opposition, both in Transylvania and from the Hungarian government. Because several cities on our tour were in Transylvania, we found both the Romanian government and the local ethnic Hungarian leaders attempted to pull us into the controversy—something I was determined to resist.
The Baptists had a strong and growing ministry in Romania; they were joined in the invitation to us by the dominant Romanian Orthodox Church, in addition to the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformed Church, and various smaller denominations—fourteen different groups in all. Even the Jewish synagogue in Bucharest welcomed me; on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, I was introduced by Rabbi Rosen and spoke to the congregation from Psalm 23.
The entire visit, however, took place in an atmosphere of tense political pressures, protracted negotiations, and even broken promises. Almost every evening, Alex and John were up past midnight attempting to hammer out details of the following day’s schedule with our government contact. One night, after a particularly difficult session, John said he was afraid I was going to be declared persona non grata and expelled from the country.
The seven-city tour was marked by massive crowds, in excess of 100,000 at some stops—by far the largest we saw anywhere in eastern Europe. Everywhere we went, we found ample evidence of spiritual hunger and openness.
Our first evangelistic meeting was near the northwestern city of Suceava, in the beautiful mountainous region of Moldavia, not far from the Soviet border. Here Metropolitan Teoctist of the Roma-nian Orthodox Church took me on a tour of several ancient Ortho-dox monasteries. They were unlike the cathedrals I was familiar with in western Europe, where elaborate stained-glass windows depicted biblical passages and figures. In Romania the monasteries did not have stained glass but instead had equally elaborate paintings or frescoes, also based on biblical themes, on the outside walls. The paint had lasted for hundreds of years, just as brilliant now as when it had first been brushed on.
One in particular I remember. (I even used it later as a sermon illustration.) Called “The Ladder of Heaven,” it portrayed the final judgment. Angels were assisting pilgrims on their way up an inclined ladder leading to Heaven, while demons clung to their heels and tried to pull them off the ladder into the lake of fire. We also visited the monastery at Putna, where Stephen the Great (1457–1504), Moldavia’s heroic king, was entombed.
On a beautiful day—Sunday, September 8—some miles outside Suceava, I preached at the Verona monastery. It was one of the annual festivals of the Romanian Orthodox Church. As we traveled there, we passed thousands of people streaming to the event, many of them walking or in carts or wagons drawn by animals. The large walled courtyard of the old monastery was filled, with people even climbing trees to listen; and thousands more outside the walls were able to hear via the special sound system installed within the courtyard.
Next we traveled to the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca. On the way to the service in a Reformed church that evening, we were greeted by 15,000 people lining the streets many blocks from the church, with thousands more crowded into the square in front. Walter and John got separated from us and were almost trampled by people rushing toward the church; the police had to rescue them. Some 8,000 people jammed the church, but no loudspeakers were permitted outside. Immediately afterward, we went to St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church for another service, with 3,500 packed inside and an estimated 5,000 outside; again speakers were not permitted outside the church, in spite of our vigorous protests.
Romanian authorities had promised that we would be permitted to place loudspeakers outside all the host churches, and also that we could run television relays to large screens in other churches. Our friend David Rennie from London, a businessman in the field of electronics, had come with a team of experts especially to supervise these installations. In each city, however, permission was withdrawn by the authorities. Alex theorized later that the Romanian authorities had simply not believed that people would come to hear the Gospel and had therefore felt free to make promises they wouldn’t have to keep. But when the crowds did come, the authorities became thoroughly alarmed. Perhaps they feared that if they permitted loudspeakers at one location, even larger crowds would gather at the next.
Church officials in Oradea and Arad managed to put loudspeakers in place anyway. At one place, I heard, a police officer told a man who was stringing wire to some loudspeakers to take them down.
“You take them down,” said the man with a shrug. “They’ll kill me if I do it.”
The crowd of thousands, already assembled hours in advance, clearly was not going to allow the speakers to be removed without a struggle. They stayed in place.
In spite of this official attitude, the assistance provided to us was little short of astonishing. The government gave us the use of two airplanes from the state-run airline—one to carry our equipment and television crew, the other to carry our Team. We had police escorts everyw
here to get us through the crowds. Even so, because of the crush of the crowd, we feared for our lives in Ti-misoara. There were an estimated 150,000 people that night in front of the cathedral.
Coming out of the packed Orthodox cathedral that evening, we were absolutely mobbed. Many in the crowd were upset because the loudspeakers that they could see outside were dead; apparently, the authorities had cut the wires. The people, forced to stand outside for the entire service, unable to hear anything, wanted me to preach from the cathedral steps. But without amplification, I could not do so; nor would the police have allowed it.
As we came down the steps, the crush of the crowd was so great that I didn’t know if we could make it. The people were very warm and friendly, though; even if I couldn’t preach to them, they wanted to see or to touch us. Most of our Team made it down the long steps to the waiting cars. I couldn’t help but think of my secretary, Stephanie Wills, who—along with the Romanian woman accompanying her and a woman from the American Embassy—was caught in that mass behind me. Finally, quite shaken up, they made it back to the hotel.
When we returned to Bucharest at the end of our trip, Pres-ident Ceausxescu, alarmed and surprised by the favorable public reaction, abruptly canceled my visit with him; I was received instead by a lesser official. Ceausxescu apparently was afraid that if he received me, some people might think he approved of what had happened. He may also have interpreted the huge crowds as a cloaked demonstration against his regime. In some ways I was sorry; I had been looking forward to sharing my faith in Christ with him.
HUNGARY
A few days later, we returned once again to Hungary. The contrast with Romania was startling, for almost immediately, Hungarian officials went out of their way to give us two unprecedented opportunities.
First, however, they expressed great concern over some of my alleged statements, which had appeared in the Romanian government’s news service; those statements made it sound as though I supported Romania’s policies toward the ethnic Hungarian minority in Tran-sylvania. We hurriedly produced the full text of my remarks, however, and the officials realized that the Romanian news reports had misquoted me.