Back in the Hometown
A new real-estate listing made a wave or two up in the mountains when the first North Carolina home of Billy Graham in Montreat came on the market.
It’s not the expansive, magnificent home that I described on this page in 2018 when the world-renowned evangelist died. Instead, this Montreat home is a more modest house, where the Grahams lived from the late 1940s, when Graham became famous, until 1957.
Though Graham was born in Charlotte, that’s not the reason he settled in the North Carolina mountains and became our most famous native son. Graham was working in Minneapolis and had his Evangelistic Association headquartered there in the ’40s.
But his in-laws, long-time Presbyterian medical missionaries at a Chinese hospital, had retired in Montreat, home of a Presbyterian conference center, college and community.
Once I attended a weekend retreat at Montreat Conference Center, and the father of a classmate who happened to be center’s director got up and welcomed us students by saying that the center was open to Presbyterians in the summer, but in the fall and winter “we let ANYBODY in.” We howled with laughter. Yes, my classmate’s dad was a catbird.
Ruth Graham, born in China, moved her family including husband Billy into a house across from her parents on the road leading to the Conference Center and Montreat College, nestled in a cove next to the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Billy Graham likely would never have returned to North Carolina if not for his head-strong wife’s insistence on living next door to her parents.
As a result of the move, Billy Graham started having to commute from Montreat to his Minneapolis-based job as well as his world-spanning evangelistic crusades, which in those days could last for weeks.
That’s the reason, I believe, that Graham once said on TV that his one regret was not being home with his kids more.
The 2,564-square-foot house that brought Graham back to N.C. after World War II has four bedrooms and two baths with a rock exterior and paved patio. It’s listed at $599,000, according to the big Asheville newspaper.
It’s owned now by the Grahams’ youngest girl, Ruth Bell, the newspaper said. She had been renting the home, the paper said. Imagine renting a home that still contained Graham mementoes like photos and books. Ruth Bell Graham said she’s decided to sell in part due to her daughter’s rising medical expenses.
Unanswered is what the Graham children and heirs are going to do with the bigger, second, mountainside home of Billy Graham in Montreat. Ruth Graham had that home built, at least the facade, with thick, sturdy logs from a nearby old mountain barn.
That place is gorgeous, with a front-yard view of the Swannanoa Valley and a cozy den with Persian-style floor rugs and a big fireplace with the title of the hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” in the original German words carved into the mantle. I compare the place to the old Hugh Chatham home and grounds at Klondike Farm in State Road, though the house styles are different.
In 1996 Graham hosted the Charlotte area press at his mountainside home to preview a crusade in the Queen City. I got to attend. After Graham took questions while sitting on the rustic front porch, we guests got to go inside the den and view the adjacent dining room, with a long mahogany table and high-back chairs.
The Grahams lived well in Montreat.
There’s no word from the Graham children on what is happening with the second, mountainside home. The oldest Graham child, Gigi, lives in Black Mountain, the Asheville newspaper said, while the others live farther off. Ruth Bell Graham, owner of the first Montreat home, lives in Virginia, the newspaper said. She offered the first home to siblings, the paper said. Presumably no takers.
When my father died, similarly I had to decide what to do with my childhood home here in the hometown, being an only child and sole heir. After a summer of sorting through things as well as my thoughts and my heart, I decided to leave the big city and come Back To The Hometown.
Ruth Bell Graham has made a different choice. Her decision to give up the family home at the time she was born was a “very hard” one, the newspaper said.
Those of us who have faced similar dilemmas sympathize.
