3 Former Presidents Speak at Graham Library Dedication

May 31, 05:30 PM

Current Headlines: CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ A weakened, white-haired but still arresting Rev. Billy Graham greeted the roughly 1,500 guests at the dedication of his library Thursday with a touch of his characteristic humility.

The 88-year-old Graham, a Charlotte native and the world's most famous evangelist, had to be driven to the dedication stage in a golf cart. When his turn came to speak _ after three former U.S. presidents, all his friends _ he shuffled slowly to the rostrum with a walker.

But his voice still carried strength. The first words out of his mouth: "I feel like I've been attending my own funeral."

The crowd laughed. "All these speeches," Graham said. "I know they all meant it, but I feel terribly small and humbled by it all. ... My whole life has been to please the Lord and honor Jesus, not to see me."

But the Billy Graham Library, on the 63-acre grounds of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's international headquarters near Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, will serve as a monument to Graham and a ministry that's reached hundreds of millions worldwide, assorted speakers said.

The three former presidents _ Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, who accepted the Graham's family's request to deliver the keynote address _ credited Graham with helping bring a message of hope and freedom to people oppressed by segregation in the United States in the 1960s and tyrannized by repressive communist regimes during the Cold War.

Graham "is a constant radiant of light in a world ... often cloaked in darkness and clouded in deceit," Bush told the guests, gathered under a massive tent on a 90-degree afternoon. "He played a decisive role in resolving the moral crises of our time. He helped tip the balance of the Cold War in freedom's favor."

The library is a 40,000-square-foot structure, five years in the making, that cost $27 million. It features photographs, films and memorabilia highlighting Graham's seven-decade evangelical career, and will soon hold Graham's personal and private papers, said his son, Franklin Graham, the president and CEO of the Graham Association.

Born in Charlotte and raised on a dairy farm four miles from the association complex near the parkway named after him, Graham rose to prominence after a series of well-publicized revival meetings in the late 1940s. Since then, he's taken his Billy Graham crusades to stadiums around the world, converting people by the thousands while offering counsel to every U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.

The library dedication drew media from throughout the nation. Some 30 news cameras shot footage of the nearly two-hour ceremony, and reporters from Florida, Texas, Time Magazine and ABC and NBC News covered the event. About 20 satellite trucks crowded the parking lot.

"This building behind me is just a building," Graham said. "It's a tool, an instrument, for the Gospel. ... I pray that God will use this to speak to many people."

His wife, Ruth Bell Graham, couldn't attend. She's ill and bedridden at their longtime home in Montreat, N.C.

"More than me," Graham said, "she deserves to be here today."

Another wife was missing: Carter's wife Rosalynn, who had planned to attend but couldn't because of a death in the family. Her husband said he had just returned from a trip to South Africa, and that Bishop Desmond Tutu and President Nelson Mandela had sent their regards to Graham.

"Which is a good indicator of how Billy Graham's message has permeated the entire world," Carter said.

Graham has a gift for reaching across seemingly impenetrable boundaries, Carter said. In the early `60s, Carter said he and Graham worked together to host a biracial rally in segregated Sumter County, Ga. When Carter was in the White House, Graham converted thousands during a trip to Communist Hungary and met with Pope John Paul II, an unusual gesture for a Protestant preacher. In 1994, Kim Jong-Il, of all people, praised Graham to Carter during the latter's trip to North Korea, Carter said.

"He was criticized by many devout Christians, going to the communists, going to the Catholics," Carter said. "But that was the kind of thing Billy Graham did."

Clinton said he met Graham in 1985, when he was governor of Arkansas. A few years later, when a Crusade brought Graham to Little Rock, Clinton said Graham went out of his way to visit Clinton's pastor, who was dying of cancer.

"It was a conversation that will stay with me until the day I die," Clinton said. "He didn't have to do that. No one would have known if he hadn't gone. Not a person would have thought less of him if he hadn't. But he did it because of who he is."

Like Carter, Clinton noted Graham's respect for racial equality long before most of his peers. During the Little Rock segregation crisis in 1957, some ministers insisted that Graham speak to a white-only crowd, Clinton said. Graham responded by threatening to cancel and tell the world why.

"And they folded like Dick's hatband," Clinton said. "It was the beginning of the end of the Old South in my home state. I will never forget it."

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