He was on the stage, but went unnoticed by most of the tens of thousands who turned out one night last week at the Rose Bowl to hear Billy Graham preach.
He escorted the aging evangelical patriarch to the pulpit and placed Graham's Bible on the lectern for him.
Then, Franklin Graham -- Billy Graham's oldest son and heir to the evangelical legend's worldwide ministry -- quietly returned to his seat in a row of chairs behind the pulpit as a first-night crowd, estimated at 45,000, rose to its feet to applaud his father.
"My commitment to him -- and his entire team's -- is we're going to help you finish well," Franklin Graham said in an interview hours before the Rose Bowl revival began. "All of us are committed to my father making sure that whatever is on his heart -- for as long as it is on his heart -- we're going to be there for him." It was almost imperceptible, but for an instant, the younger Graham had to hold his emotions in check.
This is a transition time for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn., when memories of 55 years of Graham's ministry linger like embers amid flashes of oratorical fire from a man who has become an icon of faith.
For now, the pulpit is still Billy's. More than 300,000 turned out Nov. 18 to 21 for the Greater Los Angeles Billy Graham Crusade at the Rose Bowl, ministry officials said. They estimated that 12,600 people either accepted Graham's call to believe in Jesus Christ for the first time or renewed their Christian commitments. Many said they came because they thought it would be their last chance to see Graham, 86, in person.
But Franklin Graham, 53, is the undoubted heir to the ministry his father started in 1950. Franklin Graham was named chief executive officer of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. in 2001; a year later he also became president.
He moved its long-time headquarters from Minneapolis to Charlotte, N.C. In the process, the association lost two-thirds of its workers, and now Franklin Graham says he is building a new, younger team in North Carolina. At the end of 2003, the association reported combined net assets of $296 million.
The fourth of five children, he was reared in the Grahams' log home in the Appalachian Mountains outside Asheville, N.C. When he was 22, he had what he called a conversion experience as he prayed alone in a hotel room in Jerusalem. It wasn't long before he joined a six-week mission to Asia and decided he wanted to help the poor and others in distress.
