Graham forged friendships with Texas political giants

AUSTIN, Texas -- Billy Graham swam naked with Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House, prayed with LBJ at Camp David and said words over the late president's casket alongside the Pedernales River.

He joined George W. Bush for a 1985 dip in the chilly Atlantic Ocean at Kennebunkport, Maine, an unknowing and unofficial baptism for a man close to giving up the bottle and taking on a deeper faith and maturity that led to the White House. Graham gave the invocation at Bush's 1995 gubernatorial inauguration, an echo of a similar prayer at George H.W. Bush's 1989 presidential swearing-in.

Graham had given the blessing at John Connally's first day as Texas governor as well, back in 1963, and was at the would-be president's bedside in the last hours of Connally's life in 1993. He spoke at Connally's funeral, too.

While Graham, who died Wednesday at 99, was famously a confidant and spiritual adviser for a continuous string of presidents in the decades after World War II, his kinship with Texas political giants over the past half a century stands out.

Graham, who had come to international fame with a Los Angeles parking lot religious crusade in 1949, first got to know Johnson and Connally in the early 1950s. Connally, who had been a Johnson lieutenant during LBJ's first years in Congress, by that time was working for Texas oilman Sid Richardson.

Graham, at Connally's funeral, told of a 1952 meeting with Richardson and a reading from the Book of Ezekiel in a Fort Worth hotel room that so impressed Richardson he called in his young lawyer -- Connally -- to hear from Graham as well. A dozen years later, according to an Austin American-Statesman article from the time, Graham would fly into Austin's Robert Mueller Municipal Airport for Connally's ascension to the Governor's Mansion.

Graham stayed that night at the mansion, occupied for a final few hours by departing Gov. Price Daniels. Graham had prayed at Daniel's 1957 inauguration as well. The evangelist told the newspaper he was worried about the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision limiting official prayers in public schools.

"One of the great dangers to America is that it become secularistic," Graham said.

Friendship with LBJ

Graham's relationship with Johnson would deepen later in 1963. Johnson, according to a 1991 Texas Monthly article, summoned Graham to the White House about a week after he assumed office in the wake of John F. Kennedy's assassination (and the grave wounding of Connally in the same vehicle). A discussion set for 15 minutes instead ran five hours, including that unexpected and startling suitless dip in the presidential pool.

"You just went as you were," Graham said much later.

The pastor, over Johnson's five-plus years as president and for a slightly shorter retirement stretch on his Stonewall ranch, would spend an estimated 20 nights under various LBJ roofs. They exchanged notes and gifts, Texas Monthly reported, including from Johnson an electric toothbrush, cuff links and (oddly) a bottle of laxative for the preacher. Graham sent the president Bibles, one of his books, a fruitcake and three leisure suits.

Johnson and Graham would both say that they developed a deep friendship. The evangelist, who like much of the country had come to have strong reservations about the Vietnam War and LBJ's role in expanding that conflict, admired Johnson's domestic policies.

"It was a very deep conviction that he had, that he wanted to do something for the underprivileged and the people that were oppressed in our society," Graham said, according to the Texas Monthly story. "I used to think it was sort of a political thing, (but) I visited the ranch a number of times after he left office and he still had that compassion."

Graham at LBJ's funeral service said Johnson not long before had taken him to the family plot on the LBJ Ranch -- twice, just to make his wishes clear -- and talked of Graham speaking at his burial.

"The absence of his vibrant and dominant personality seems strange to us," Graham said to those gathered at the funeral. "There was a massive manhood to Lyndon Johnson. He was a mountain of a man, with a whirlwind of a heart."

Bush connection

Graham, who in a 2005 interview with Katie Couric on the "Today" show shared the news that he was a registered Democrat, nonetheless remained close to state leaders as Texas turned Republican in the 1980s and 1990s.

Former President George H.W. Bush issued a statement Wednesday upon Graham's death.

"I was privileged to have him as a personal friend," Bush said. "He would come to Maine to visit with Barbara and me, and he was a great sport. He loved going really fast in my boat. I guess you could say we had that in common. Then we would come home and talk about life."

Presidential historical Mark Updegrove, president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, tells of an early episode in the Bush-Graham connection in his book, "The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush," excerpted last year in Parade magazine.

On a 1985 visit to Maine, when George H.W. Bush was vice president, his eldest son took an impromptu sea swim with Graham (apparently this time with swimsuits). Then the younger Bush stood in the back of the living room with a glass of wine as Graham and his elders had a spiritual discussion.

The vice president, Updegrove wrote, noted that his mother was a believer but had not gone through any sort of Baptist-style, born-again experience. Graham, who had, replied, "But I needed it, and your mom didn't."

The future 43rd president of the United States, Updegrove wrote, "thought, Wow, that's a good answer. It wasn't an epiphany, but he started listening more intently to Graham throughout the evening." George W. Bush received a Graham Bible shortly thereafter as well, and he started reading it.

His drinking soon stopped. Nine years later, Graham's new young friend was Texas governor, and then president six years after that.

Ben Wear writes for the Austin American-Statesman. Email: bwear(at)statesman.com.

Story Filed By Cox Newspapers

For Use By Clients of the New York Times News Service