Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Billy Graham Library dedicated

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Three former U.S. presidents came to honor him, the last one letting out a sob as he spoke.

Speaker after speaker praised him - his love of God, his humility, his six decades on the road, preaching to 210-million people. They dedicated a new, $27-million library to commemorate his life.

Then Billy Graham, his once-roaring voice diminished by age and illness, told a crowd of well-wishers Thursday that their attention was in the wrong place.

"This building behind me is just a building, " the 88-year-old preacher said in view of the new Billy Graham Library. "It's an instrument, a tool for the Gospel. The primary thing is the Gospel of Christ."

The 40, 000-square-foot complex traces Graham's rise from farm boy to America's pastor and was built to carry on his work after he is gone.

The emotional dedication ceremony for the library had the air of a final tribute. Even Graham quipped that "I feel like I've been attending my own funeral." And he was overcome himself while paying tribute to his 86-year-old wife, Ruth, who has degenerative osteoarthritis of the back and neck and is bedridden at the couple's home in Montreat.

Graham suffers from fluid on the brain, prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease, and is largely confined to the mountainside home himself. He was driven by golf cart to the stage, where he used a walker and leaned on his son and successor, Franklin, to reach a seat.

Former President George Bush sobbed as he spoke of how much the minister meant to him, calling Graham "a spiritual gift to all of us." Bush said preacher had comforted four generations of his family; that includes President George W. Bush, who sent Graham a handwritten note last week.

Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton recalled how Graham's insistence that his crusades be racially integrated helped bring blacks and whites together in the South. But Clinton said Graham, who has met every U.S. president since Harry Truman and became a confidant to many of them, is just as impressive for his personal kindness.

As chief executive of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the Rev. Franklin Graham has primary responsibility for preserving his father's legacy. He initiated the idea for a library, which opens Tuesday and will be free to the public.

[Last modified June 1, 2007, 14:29:12]