A Higher Power

The invitation to Boys State followed the next summer.

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Mike Huckabee as a teenager in Hope, Arkansas.(Family Photo)

All of the participants campaigned for office, with the prestige of the position sought, from alderman to governor, betraying the extent of each boy's ambition. Huckabee sought the top job from the moment he arrived.

Winning an election was hard work. A candidate had to collect 25 signatures on a petition from members of his own party, survive a primary and, ultimately, appeal to enough members of the opposing party to prevail, making speeches at every stage of the process. Huckabee swept into the governor's office with more than 80 percent of the vote.

"He challenged the young men to get involved and told us we could make a difference," recalls Jonathan Barnett, then chairman of the Arkansas High School Republicans. "He talked about how fortunate we were that we lived in the United States. And he talked about how the Bill of Rights guaranteed us 'the pursuit of happiness' -- not the guarantee of happiness."

When Boys State ended, Barnett told Huckabee that he wanted him to run for public office someday and asked if he could manage his campaign when the time came. Huckabee demurred, explaining his call to the ministry. Barnett didn't try to talk him out of it. But at least once a year, he'd phone to ask whether Huckabee had changed his mind.

"I'd say, 'Mike, are you ready?' " says Barnett, now a general contractor in Siloam Springs, Ark. "And he'd say, 'No, I'm not ready.' I took that to mean he might not ever be ready."

Boys State ended on June 9. On June 12, Billy Graham opened Explo '72 with a rousing call to action. "We are here to say to the world that Christian youth are now on the march," Graham said to thunderous cheers. "And we're going to keep marching until millions of people are brought into the kingdom of God!"

Tens of thousands of teenagers each received a yellow pamphlet containing Bright's treatise, "The Four Spiritual Laws," which explained how to lead nonbelievers to Christ. In the days that followed, they attended training sessions to hone their evangelical skills and fanned out in Dallas-Fort Worth neighborhoods to talk with residents about God's word.

Huckabee roomed in a Southern Methodist University dorm with Lester Sitzes, his best friend since second grade. They did their evangelizing together, with Huckabee, the more polished speaker, taking the lead. "I was always Mike's wingman," Sitzes says with a chuckle.

On the last night, they returned to the Cotton Bowl for a huge concert headlined by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Christian artists. As attendees filed into the stadium, each person was handed an unlit candle.

Huckabee has vivid memories of what followed. After Graham finished speaking, the lights were turned off. Graham lit his candle and then lit Bright's, turning one light into two. Each man lit another candle, so two became four. The audience was told to follow suit, lighting their neighbor's candle as soon as theirs was lit.

"Two things made an impression," recalls Huckabee, who was seated at the opposite end of the stadium. "Even though I was extremely far away, that tiny flickering of the one candle penetrated the darkness, and I saw it. That told me that even a little bit of light in the midst of darkness is worth something. . . . The second thing that happened was, as those candles began to accelerate -- because obviously it happens pretty quickly through the principle of multiplication -- this light just starts expanding around the stadium, faster and faster, until the stadium is aglow. It had a big impact on me -- the rapidity with which something can spread, good or bad, and the impact that one life, and one light, can make. That's when it really sunk in to me that one person can make a difference."