Evangelist Billy Graham’s wife dies at 87

Remained a loyal Presbyterian
Ruth Graham moved the couple into her parents’ home in Montreat, where they had relocated after fleeing wartime China. She stayed in western North Carolina mountain town the rest of her life.

The young couple later bought their own house across the street from the Bells. Then in 1956, needing protection from gawkers, the Grahams moved into Little Piney Cove, a comfortably rustic mountainside home she designed using logs from abandoned cabins. It became Billy’s retreat between evangelistic forays.

Though the wife of a famous Baptist minister, the independent-minded Ruth Graham declined to undergo baptism by immersion and remained a loyal, lifelong Presbyterian. When in Montreat, a town built around a Presbyterian conference center, Billy Graham would attend the local Presbyterian church where his wife often taught the college-age Sunday School class.

Due to her husband’s travels, she bore major responsibility for raising the couple’s five children: Franklin (William Franklin III), Nelson, Virginia, Anne and Ruth.

Ruth Graham was the author or co-author of 14 books, including collections of poetry and the autobiographical scrapbook “Footprints of a Pilgrim.”

In 1996, the Grahams were each awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for “outstanding and lasting contributions to morality, racial equality, family, philanthropy, and religion.”

Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell began her writing career with a Ruth Graham biography that depicted many deeds of personal charity. Cornwell said as a youth in Montreat she thought Ruth Graham “was the loveliest, kindest person ever born. I still do.”

She helped establish the Ruth and Billy Graham Children’s Health Center in Asheville, and the Billy Graham Training Center near Montreat.

The osteoarthritis that afflicted Ruth resulted from a serious fall from a tree in 1974 while rigging a slide for grandchildren.

It became clear this week her death was close, when Billy Graham said his wife was “close to going home to Heaven.”

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