'Happiest Woman In The World’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31079, 7 June 1966, Page 2

'Happiest Woman In The World’

(BY

SUSAN VAUGHAN)

When Dr. Billy Graham, the 48-year-old American evangelist, arrived in Britain recently for a months crusade of Greater London, he brought his wife on one of her rare trips abroad.

Usually Mirs Ruth Graham stays at their mountain-top home at Montreat, North Carolina, to look after their four children—Anne aged 18, Ruth 15, Franklin 13, and Nelson eight. Their eldest daughter, Virginia, aged 21, lives in Montreux, Switzerland, with her Swiss husband.

“If I didnt’ travel round with him occasionally,” she says, “I would see nothing of turn. He’s away from home 80 per cent of the time, but knowing how important his work is I’m quite content to have it that way.” She accepts her role as the woman behind the world’s greatest evangelist philosophically. “There are times when I envy my friends when I see married couples together in the evenings while I’m usually alone. But I don’t give way to self-pity. No Monotony

“There are even advantages. I sometimes see how othef marriages become so matter-of-fact because of the monotony of daily married life. There’s nothing like that about our marriage. We’ve been raised on separation so there can never be any monotony.” For the first 18 years of her life Mrs Graham lived in China where her father was a Baptist minister. She learnt to speak Chinese before English and she is an expert Chinese cook. She met her husband when they were at the same college in America. “It was love at first sight," she says. "There’s never been anyone else for me except Bill.” She has always had complete faith in her husband’s work. “I always knew that his wonderful gift for preaching, his burning desire to tell about God, would give him a very wide mission.” In fact, by marrying Billy Graham, she thwarted her own hopes of a career, because she, too, wanted to be a missionary.

“I’m the happiest woman in the world,” she says. “I’ve never regretted not having a career of my own because the greatest career of all is now mine. And I’m convinced it's the most thrilling and satisfying work in the world.”