Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 9, 1995 TAG: 9511090075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Billy Graham, who once said only God can choose his successor, will be succeeded by his oldest boy, a prodigal who drank, fought and was expelled from college before a conversion at 22.
Ending years of speculation over who will take over the nation's most coveted evangelical pulpit, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association announced Wednesday that Franklin Graham was elected to the new position of first vice chairman, with the right of succession if his father becomes incapacitated.
The 77-year-old Graham, who has Parkinson's disease, said he will continue as chairman and chief executive of the organization he founded in 1950.
``As a father I am both proud of his capacity for leadership and humbled in gratitude for the Lord's blessing on him,'' Billy Graham said.
Franklin Graham, 43, rebelled against his famous father as a teen-ager and young adult. He was kicked out of LeTourneau College in Longview, Texas, after his father had used his influence to get him in.
At 22, Graham reported having a religious experience in Jerusalem that changed his life. In 1978, he joined the board of Samaritan's Purse, a mission organization.
In recent years, the younger Graham has increasingly been preaching. He spoke to over 200,000 people at nine crusades in the United States and Canada this year, and appeared with his father for the first time at an October crusade in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
He will continue as director of Samaritan's Purse and World Medical Mission, an organization he helped found.
In an interview Wednesday, the younger Graham echoed his father's sentiments that ``only God knows'' who will replace Billy Graham as America's leading evangelist, but he vowed, ``I will be a voice'' on the crusade landscape.
For now, he said, he is committed to doing whatever he can to support his father.
``I want the last years of his ministry to be the best years of his ministry,'' Franklin Graham said.
by CNB