A Family at Cross-Purposes

Ned Graham has been working to convince his three sisters, Gigi, Bunny and Anne, that their mother's wishes should be followed.

But six years ago, Franklin, 54, took over the BGEA and now is trying to convince their dad of the appropriateness of the Charlotte burial site, Ned and another family member say.

Franklin, in a telephone interview, says no decision has been made. "Some of the board members feel the library ought to be the place," he says, declining to name which members. "I'm preparing both places."

Of the library, he said, "I wanted to show to another generation of pastors and evangelists what God did through a man who was faithful and who communicated it simply."

After Cornwell finishes, Ned Graham speaks to his father.

"Could you see going to a Ronald Reagan library and there not be one book?" he asks. "Or people being solicited to be on a donor list?" He wipes his eyes; his mother, tissue in hand, wipes hers.

Billy Graham, who has Parkinson's disease, sits erect in an orthopedic chair, dressed in pressed bluejeans and a pale yellow pullover. His famous rugged face remains impassive except for something Ned notices: He's grinding his teeth.

His dad, he says, does this when he's upset. And why wouldn't he be?

The burial issue threatens to tear asunder what some have called the royal family of American religion, and Billy is being asked to make a Solomon-like choice between the wishes of his heir and his wife of 63 years.

The Preacher's Wife

According to those who know her, Ruth Bell Graham has always spoken her mind. When she and Billy married in 1943, Ruth, raised by Presbyterian missionaries in China, told her husband, a Southern Baptist, that she would remain a Presbyterian. When Billy announced in 1947 that he wanted to become a full-time traveling evangelist, she insisted that they settle in Montreat, a hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so that she and the children could be near family.

With his tall frame and Hollywood good looks, Graham drew record crowds to his Billy Graham Crusades and became so popular that between 1950 and 1990, he appeared on the Gallup Organization's "Most Admired" list more often than any other American.

He traveled as much as six months at a time and while he was away, Ruth was raising their children in a house built from logs found on abandoned farm sites. Her children say that she was fearless and fun, a mom who thought nothing of chopping off the heads of rattlesnakes or driving a motocross bike into a split-rail fence when she realized she didn't know how to stop it.