VALDOSTA — Valdosta Baptist Association is planning a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event for 2014, which is expected to draw thousands. One Valdostan has had the privilege of meeting spiritual giant Billy Graham and says he is the “real deal.”

Bill Daniel was working as a layman for the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention when he and 49 other men from the HMB in Atlanta were recruited in 1986 to assist with Graham’s Conference for Itinerant Evangelists. The three-week event drew 10,000 evangelists from all over the world to the RAI Stadium in Amsterdam, Holland. The itinerant evangelists were those not tied to a church, and many of them were missionaries to third-world countries.

“Some countries were refusing to allow evangelists to leave,” Daniel recalled. “(Graham’s association) was intervening, negotiating. One group, don’t recall the country now, finally received permission to board a plane and fly with only the clothes on their backs, no luggage. The plane taxied out and was stopped again. BGEA again intervened, and they finally got permission to come. When the group entered the RAI area, applause erupted all over, with many tears of joy.”

Graham’s association paid for the trip for the visiting evangelists, and clothes were provided as well.

“Billy’s son, Franklin, had started his Samaritan’s Purse and brought all kinds of clothes to Amsterdam,” Daniel said. “They knew many were poor, many would come with only what they wore.

“One man from Africa arrived and was taken to the Samaritan Purse area. He insisted the only thing he needed was a wedding dress to take back for his daughter, soon to be married. This is how God works — Franklin had brought one wedding dress, and it was the exact size the man needed.”

Daniel said the convention was designed to assist in training evangelists for the Gospel worldwide.

“Some said an underlying agenda was that Mr. Graham was looking for his successor, though that was not verbalized,” Daniel said.

There was a funny incident that happened at the convention, Daniel reminisced.

“At the end of the week, the evangelists were to be taken out to the countryside to practice what they had learned ... I was assigned as a bus captain and given my area to go with about 50 evangelists. Our destination: the topless beach. My instruction was to keep up with all 50, and keep them off the beach. Despite their own instruction to only witness to those approaching the beach, I spent my afternoon getting them off the beach and back onto the bus.”

Daniel, who got to speak briefly to Graham, described the famed evangelist as “a very humble, approachable man, with deep blue eyes that made you feel he could look into your very soul.”

The Valdostan said Graham mixed with everyone from bottom to top, ate in the meal area with everyone else, the same meals — all airline meals from KLM.

Daniel called the convention “a high point in my service at the Home Mission Board ... a high point of my entire life.”

His job at the HMB, where he served from 1978-1992, was director of information services.

“I do believe I was called there to help bring the Home Mission Board into the 20th century with computers,” he said.

While there, he got to meet spiritual giants such as Charles Stanley, Adrian Rogers and Henry Blackaby, as well as missionaries with “tremendous” stories:

• a couple working in the lower East Side of New York City and living in a one-bedroom apartment for $1,500 a month in the early ’80s with their children sleeping in closets.

• Russell Begaye, a

 Navajo Indian from New Mexico, whose father was a tribal medicine man. He and his brother, Andrew, were converted by home missionaries, and they were “beaten with barb wire” by their father for their faith, Daniel said.

• A missionary in Arizona to the Zuni Indians, who ministered to them for 20 years before the first Zuni Indian was converted to Christianity.



A look back

Daniel was born on Dec. 16, 1937, in Atlanta, the oldest of two children of the late William E. and Irene Davidson Daniel of College Park. Bill has had a life-long fascination and love of Valdosta.

“When I was a child in College Park, my dad was a policeman and liked to vacation in Daytona Beach,” Bill said. “Because there was no air-conditioning in those days, my dad would leave at night, and we would drive down Highway 41 and ... arrive at sunrise and stop in Valdosta and eat breakfast at the Roosevelt Cafe across from the Daniel Ashley Hotel. I became intrigued with Valdosta.

“When I was in high school, the College Park Rams were undefeated in the Atlanta area for two years in ’52 and ’53. Both years, we wound up having to play Valdosta in Class A for the South Georgia championship. Both years, we went home with our tails between our legs, but we fell in love with Valdosta even more.”

When Bill got out of the Army after two years, he met the former Fran Scruggs, daughter of the late Franklin and Ruth Scruggs of Valdosta. Her dad was working in Atlanta with Atlanta Gas at the time.

“The year after we married, he was transferred back to Valdosta,” Bill said. “For 30 years, we traveled back and forth visiting.”

Attempts by the couple to find work in Valdosta so they could move here were unsuccessful. Bill decided the only way he would get to Valdosta was to open a business here. He purchased a franchise for Mail Boxes Etc. in 1992 and opened the following year.

Fran had finished college at age 48, with a degree as a medical lab technician from Clayton State College in 1991. She was offered a job at South Georgia Medical Center. Their house was put on the market on a Monday and it sold for full price on that Friday.

Bill noted that his fascination with Valdosta from high school to 1992 when he retired from the Home Mission Board was 40 years.

“I had been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, and now I’m coming to the Promised Land,” he joked.

The couple, whose love for each other is very evident, have been married for 50 years, living in Valdosta for 20 of those years. They are members of the Valdosta Tea Party, the Lowndes County Republican Party, and Northside Baptist Church. Fran serves as a Hospice of South Georgia volunteer, and Bill volunteers for the Break Bread meal delivery for a local church.

“God has been in our lives from the beginning,” Fran said. “I was dating a guy who was sneaking around on me. I prayed for a knight in shining armor on a white horse. Bill pulls up in a white convertible with 350 horsepower.

“You have to be careful what you ask for,” she said, laughing. “Fifty years later, here we are.”

The Daniels have three sons, Todd and James who live in Valdosta and John of Durand, Wis. They have five grandchildren.

“We both like to travel,” Bill said of their pastimes. “Until recently, one of my passions was hiking the Appalachian Trail. I’ve covered 260 miles of it — a drop in the bucket.”

After getting his diabetes under control, he’s ready to try another leg of the trail.

Bill also enjoys collecting stamps.

“He’s a workaholic,” Fran said of her husband who is nearing his 75th birthday. “(Despite retiring) he drives two days a week for Enterprise.”

Fran said her husband has a great sense of humor and is a “kind” and “thoughtful” man.

“We have had the biblical marriage,” she added. “I don’t mind the verses where Paul says to be submissive to your husband because of his attitude. We are the best of friends.”

“When Paul writes that,” her husband added, “he doesn’t mean to lord over, but to take care of her.”

Their lives have not been without challenges, including 1970 when the computer industry fell apart. The day he came home to say his division had been shut down and he no longer had a job, Fran announced she was pregnant with their third child.

“I was chasing the dollar bills in those days,” Bill said. “God managed to restructure the priorities in my life.”

Six months after losing his job, when he couldn’t make another house or car payment and they had gone through all of their savings, he got a job with Cox Broadcasting. It was only a month later when they had a house fire and a premature birth followed. But God got them through those challenges, also.

“God has blessed me really well,” Bill said.