Billy Graham - from Trains.com
Trains.com, Feb. 21, 2018, Website
Billy Graham ran into career doubts because of Altoona
WAUKESHA, Wis. — It is hard to imagine that a revival in Altoona, Pa., made the Rev. Billy Graham doubt his calling.
Graham died this morning at his home in Montreat, N.C., at age 99. But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that before the Southern Baptist preacher dazzled thousands in Los Angeles in 1949, it was in the heart of U.S. railroading and coal country — Altoona — that Graham nearly lost heart for his ministry.
"If I ever conducted a campaign that was a flop, humanly speaking, Altoona was it!" the Post-Gazette quotes Graham as writing in his 1997 memoir, "Just As I Am."
Apparently, Graham's "Crusade" in the city, known for its gargantuan Pennsylvania Railroad shops, provoked disagreement among certain Protestant clergy though the people received him warmly. At the time, Graham and members of his Crusade Choir could only pray and hope that they could finish their mission in Altoona and move on to the next place.
As for Trains Magazine, Graham appears at least once since 1940, specifically in Editor David P. Morgan's November 1978 editorial. In it, Morgan describes an idea Graham once gave to President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1956 to offer "an ultramodern white train" to India and the Indian people as a gift. Why? The Soviet Union had just donated a white horse and Graham thought more people could see and touch a white train.
Graham took to the world's pulpit 1949 and befriended U.S. presidents and counseled business leaders for decades while attracting a loyal following of Christians numbering in the millions before retiring from public life in 2005.
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On a personal note we'll join the world wide chorus in saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant".