Ruth Graham

News Obituary Article

MONTREAT, N.C.: Ruth Graham, 87, 'life partner'

By GAYLE WHITE

Ruth Bell Graham visited the likes of the White House and Buckingham Palace on the arm of her famous husband, but spent most of her life tending the home fires in the North Carolina mountains while her famous husband traveled the world.

The Rev. Billy Graham lost his helpmate Thursday when Ruth Graham, 87, died at the family home in Montreat, N.C.

Mrs. Graham had been bedridden for months with degenerative osteoarthritis of the back and neck and underwent treatment for pneumonia two weeks ago. She was surrounded by her husband and five children when she died at 5:05 p.m., said a statement released by Larry Ross, the Rev. Graham's spokesman.

"Ruth was my life partner, and we were called by God as a team," the Rev. Graham said in a statement. "No one else could have borne the load that she carried. She was a vital and integral part of our ministry, and my work through the years would have been impossible without her encouragement and support.

"I am so grateful to the Lord that He gave me Ruth, and especially for these last few years we've had in the mountains together. We've rekindled the romance of our youth, and my love for her continued to grow deeper every day. I will miss her terribly, and look forward even more to the day I can join her in Heaven."

The 88-year-old evangelist, himself seriously ill, had announced Wednesday that both he and his wife would be buried at the new Billy Graham Library in Charlotte.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Graham is survived by two sons, three daughters and 19 grandchildren. Her children --- each in various ministries --- are as likely to credit their mother's steadfast faith as their father's dynamic preaching for their own strong Christian convictions.

Her husband once wrote, "Through the years, Ruth has made my home a place of love, joy, and tranquility. Her deep faith in God, her constant study of the Scriptures, current events, and social problems have always been a source of inspiration. We have long talks on many subjects. Some of my best thoughts have actually come from her."

Growing up in Asia

She was born Ruth McCue Bell on June 10, 1920, in China, delivered by her father, L. Nelson Bell, a physician and Presbyterian missionary. She spent her first 17 years in Asia.

At a 1994 reunion of Presbyterian missionaries to China at Decatur's Columbia Theological Seminary, she said one of her earliest memories was of her aman, her Chinese nurse, sitting on a stool singing the Chinese words to the hymn "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood."

As an adolescent, she planned to follow her parents' career path and become a missionary to Tibet. She was determined never to marry.

That changed at Wheaton College in Illinois when she met lanky Billy Frank Graham, who claimed to have been immediately smitten with both her prettiness and her piety. After their first date, she was willing to forgo her planned celibate existence in the mission field: "Oh, Lord, if you wish to give me the privilege of sharing my life with this man, I could have no greater joy," she prayed.

On Aug. 13, 1943, after both graduated from Wheaton, they married in a little chapel in the mountain town of Montreat, N.C., a Presbyterian enclave where Mrs. Graham's parents had settled after evacuating from China.

She, her husband and their growing family eventually settled in Montreat, as well. But as the Rev. Graham's fame spread, their home became a tourist attraction. To foil unscrupulous reporters and curiosity seekers who might go through her trash, Mrs. Graham peeled labels off prescription bottles and burned personal bills, according to her biographer, mystery writer Patricia Cornwell.

Eventually, to avoid tourists peering in their windows, the Grahams bought land outside town where Mrs. Graham supervised construction of a home made from aged lumber from log cabins and demolished homesteads, then filled it with antiques.

She was inevitably drawn into the spotlight with her husband, but she was more likely to sound a cautionary note than to assert herself when dealing with powerful people. She kicked her husband under the table when President Lyndon B. Johnson asked him who his running mate should be, wrote Mrs. Cornwell, and she stewed over the encroachment on his ministry of his friendship with President Richard Nixon.

But her concern did not obliterate her personal affection for President Nixon. It was Mrs. Graham who arranged for an airplane to pull a banner over California saying, "Nixon, we love you---so does God."

For the most part, however, while her husband spent an average of six months a year preaching to filled stadiums and consorting with kings and presidents, she stayed in Montreat raising the five little Grahams, whose behavior was frequently less than godly.

Once, while running errands, she put oldest son Franklin, his father's designated successor at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, into the car trunk because of his misbehavior. Long before federal sentencing guidelines, she kept a list of punishments to suit any crime. The first fight, for instance, called for 10 minutes isolation. Sassing brought on switching with a fly-swatter.

Applying her standards of behavior to those outside the family resulted in a run-in with the law in 1975. Sitting on the front row at a celebration in Charlotte and listening to a speech by President Gerald Ford, she noticed a barefooted, shirtless protester in a restricted area. His placard said "Eat the Rich" on one side and "Don't Tread on Me" on the other.

In what she later described as a spontaneous and instinctive act, she rose, grabbed the sign, resumed her seat and continued to listen to Ford's speech. Later, when the protester realized the identity of his assailant, he swore out a warrant against her.

Told that if convicted she faced a $50 fine or 30 days in jail, she told her lawyer she would take the jail sentence. "I feel very strongly that what I did was right, and paying a fine would be to me an admission of guilt," she said. She treated the protester as she would have treated one of her sons, she said, except that had she been dealing with her son, "I'd have given him a resounding whack on the bottom."

After hearing testimony from the protester, a judge dismissed the case. President Ford called to congratulate her.

A soft spot for underdogs

Though she could be tough and feisty, Mrs. Graham had a soft heart for underdogs of all kinds---including her children when they strayed.

Both sons went through periods of youthful drinking and carousing. Even during the roughest years, the Grahams offered unconditional love, son Nelson "Ned" Graham recalled.

"Frequently I'd come home---sometimes at 2, 3, or 4 in the morning --- inebriated, stoned, whatever," he said. "Mother inevitably would be sitting in her rocking chair in the kitchen. She would get up in her nightgown, with tired, red eyes. I knew she'd been crying for me or praying for me or both. Instead of flying into a rage, she'd putter over to me, kiss me on my forehead and say, 'Ned, I'm glad you're home. I'm going to bed now.'"

Her acceptance extended to all kinds of people, Mrs. Cornwell wrote in her biography: "Had she ever kept a guest book, it would have held the names of drug addicts, thieves, the delusional and deranged and juvenile delinquents from the local detention center who had committed crimes of vandalism or murder."

It would also have included Patsy Daniels and her brother --- children whose mother dumped them unceremoniously on the Grahams' doorstep as she headed out of town. When Patsy married one of her college English professors, she became Patr