by Dave Roberts » Fri Mar 02, 2018 4:30 pm
This morning as I listened to "Morning Edition" on NPR, they did a very nice piece on Billy's death and his funeral preparations. Then they had an interview with a staff member of the BGEA whose name I did not catch. One of the reporter's questions was "When did Billy Graham write the column that he said should be published the day after his death?" With some hesitancy, the staff member admitted that Billy did not actually write it as it appeared. He said that every word was either spoken or written in the past by Billy Graham, but the compiled piece was finished by family and BGEA staff. Perhaps it is just me, but I find this troublesome since it was released to the papers not as having been "approved by Billy and the family" but as having been written by him for this occasion. Somehow this seems beneath the ethics he generally practiced in his life. If anything, I find it takes away from his legacy to publish pseudonymously and only acknowledging this when confronted by a reporter's question.