Ruth, a Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham

by Patricia Cornwell

  IF I MARRY…

  Credits

  First I must honor Ruth herself for her assistance in the preparation of a book that now stretches over fifteen years.

  I thank her for entrusting me with some two thousand pages of her private letters and diaries. Without their artistry and remarkable detail, the fabric of this biography would be painfully thin and colorless. I am indebted for the countless hours she spent with me in person and over the telephone, and for letting me excavate through cartons of photographs, only to return in 1996 with friend and Washington Post journalist Laura Stepp to dig some more.

  I thank Ruth’s brother the Reverend Clayton Bell, of Dallas, Texas, for granting me access to some thirteen hundred letters written by Nelson Bell in China. I thank Virginia Bell Sommerville, of Taejon, Korea, for turning over Mrs. Bell’s China diaries, discovered in a basement. I thank Rosa Bell Montgomery for sharing several days in her former home in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

  I thank Mary, Sarah, and Margaret McCue of Mount Sidney, Virginia, for showing me Belvidere and sharing family letters.

  I am grateful to Irwin S. and Jean Yeaworth of Valley Forge Films for allowing me to view the footage of Ruth’s first return to China and indulging me in mulled cider and Peking duck while I did so.

  I dearly love Billy Graham for his ever sweet, unassuming, and gracious attention, and, most profoundly, for not disappointing me up close. You are better than your legend and bigger than your name.

  I am grateful to Billy’s family for their time: his mother, Morrow Graham, who died in the fall of 1981; his late brother, Melvin, and sisters Jean Graham Ford and Catherine Graham McElroy. I thank the Graham children Anne, Bunny, Franklin, and Ned for their patient interviews. To the oldest child, GiGi, I give my heart.

  GiGi, what would I have done without you? I wish you were my sister.

  I thank employees of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association office in Montreat: Evelyn Freeland, Maury Scobee, Karlene Aceto, Sally Wilson, and Stephanie Wills. All are surely sick and tired of hearing my voice over the telephone and picking me up at the airport. I thank other BGEA employees and friends of the Grahams: Mrs. Cliff (Billie) Barrows; former public relations director Gerald Beavan; actress Joan Winmill Brown and her husband, Bill Brown, president of World Wide Pictures; writer Colleen Townsend Evans; singer George Beverly Shea; and associate evangelist Grady Wilson.

  I am grateful to my old friends at the Charlotte Observer who gave me access to the paper’s library. I will never forget that it was editors there who gave me my first job in journalism.

  I appreciate everyone, and there are too many people to mention, who granted me interviews, shared letters with me, or gave me suggestions. I especially appreciate the contributions of Gay Currie Fox and of Hampton Talbot (who died in the fall of 1982), for without their vivid recollections much that is in the chapters on China would not be remembered.

  I can’t say enough about my adopted dad, the Reverend Calvin Thielman, Montreat Presbyterian Church. Someday I will write you another poem.

  I am greatly indebted to the scholars who read my manuscript or donated bits of their learning to it: Dr. Mary D. Beaty, assistant librarian, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina; Dr. John H. Leith, professor of theology, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia; Dr. Arthur S. Link, editor, the Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey; Eileen Moffett and Dr. Samuel H. Moffett, professor of missions and ecumenics, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey; and my instigator and personal editor, the late Charles E. Lloyd, professor emeritus of English, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina.

  I am honored by the following people who took hours from their frenetic schedules to write, telephone, or see me in person: William F. Buckley Jr., Barbara Bush, June Carter Cash, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Paul Harvey, William Randolph Hearst Jr., Senator Jesse Helms, Lady Bird Johnson, Bob Jones Jr., Dr. Harold Lindsell, Dan Rather, and, of course, Billy Graham.

  Finally, I offer my warmest thanks to my agent, Esther Newberg.

  I haven’t forgotten my former husband, the Reverend Charles L. Cornwell, who had to live with this project back then. You were a great encouragement.

  If I have left anyone out, and of course I have, I beg forgiveness.

  It would be impossible to footnote every quotation. Therefore, one can assume that all unattributed quotations in the text came from private papers and my interviews with Ruth and others.

  In keeping with her wishes, many of the names in the book are fictitious to protect those she always did.

  To you, Ruth, the cricket sang.

  A GALILEE BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

  a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036

  GALILEE, DOUBLEDAY, and the portrayal of a ship with a cross above a book are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  First Galilee edition published November 1998 by special arrangement with Doubleday.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover Doubleday edition as follows:

  Cornwell, Patricia Daniels.

  Ruth, a portrait: the story of Ruth Bell Graham / Patricia Cornwell. —1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Graham, Ruth Bell. 2. Baptists—United States—Biography. 3. Evangelists’ spouses—United States—Biography. 4. Spouses of clergy—United States—Biography. 5. Children of missionaries— Biography. 6. Graham, Billy, 1918– . I. Title.

  BX6495.G666C67 1997

  269′.2′092

  [B]—DC20 96-41961

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76514-7

  Copyright © 1997 by Cornwell Enterprises, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  v3.0