When I visited Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center Archives last summer, I came across a slim manila folder labeled, “File closed until after Billy Graham’s death.” Graham had died a few years earlier, so the file was unsealed. My heart fluttered: What was in there? Why the secrecy over it? I didn’t expect anything scandalous — we’re talking about Billy Graham, after all — but my curiosity was piqued.
The file contained letters from Graham to Herbert J. Taylor, a powerful business executive and a major donor to evangelical causes for decades. Taylor was leading the effort to organize a Graham crusade in Chicago in 1962, a vast undertaking that required two years of planning and fundraising.
The letters were surprisingly blunt. Graham was unhappy that Taylor was not busy lining up the support of Chicago-area churches and pastors — one of Graham’s top priorities. He worried about using Soldier Field as a site because of the possibility of bad weather and empty seats, which would be embarrassing to the preacher.
In the letter shown here, Graham reveals his frustration with Taylor when he told the press he expected 1 million people to attend and 50,000 conversions. “In thinking it over — I think your press conference put the crusade back and did a great deal of harm!” Graham wrote in his own hand to emphasize his displeasure. In a later letter labeled “personal and confidential,” Graham detailed Taylor’s shortcomings and said he should consider stepping aside as chairman. Taylor took on a face-saving role and the crusade went on to be a success.
The letters offered a fascinating glimpse into the real Billy Graham — a hard-nosed organizer who zealously protected his image as one of the most well-known and admired people in America. So a great find, right? Yes, but the only problem was that I couldn’t figure out how to incorporate it in my book. I had already written about several of Graham’s earlier crusades, and adding another one seemed excessive. The Chicago crusade also didn’t fit well with my timeline. So the best I could do was to add a little texture here and there about Graham’s tough-minded approach to running his enterprises.
Research is a joy and a pitfall for authors. The discoveries and connections are thrilling, but sometimes you have to leave them out despite the time it took to find them. Resources like archives and newspapers.com are wondrous but incredibly distracting and time-consuming if you aren’t careful. It’s tempting to include every interesting scrap of research and every pointed quote from an interview. You need to have the discipline to think about how the material will serve the reader. In the case of Graham’s letters … well, at least I got a blog post out of it!