They Came With Faith and Reasons : BILLY GRAHAM CRUSADE : The return of the nation’s foremost evangelist to Orange County

At precisely 6 p.m. Friday, the gates were opened and thousands of people scrambled for choice seats at Anaheim Stadium to hear the word of evangelist Billy Graham, who is conducting what may be his last stadium crusade in America.

Once the rush to the seats was over, the crowd settled in to wait.

But for Jeannette Summers, 77, of Tustin, who sat near first base with a group of elderly friends, the famed evangelist was not the main attraction.

Back in LaGrange, Ind., when she was a girl, Summers knew Cliff Barrows’ grandparents and parents. She had not seen Barrows, 62, who has been Graham’s music director for 39 years, since he was 3 months old.

“I’ve always followed him. I always watched the Billy Graham crusades on television just to see Cliff Barrows,” she said.

When Barrows, on his way to warm up the 10,400-member volunteer choir, learned that Summers was in the stands, he asked a reporter to lead him to her.

Reunion ‘a Thrill’

When he found her, Barrows kissed her and hugged her warmly. Summers then asked about his family and recalled briefly for him the times their two families had shared long ago.

“It is a thrill to see you,” Summers told him.

“It is so nice to see you,” Barrows replied.

Still smiling, Barrows just shook his head as he walked back to the infield to lead the choir.

“I guess you could say I didn’t know her very well back then,” he said of the surprise reunion almost 62 years later.

The moments preceding the start of the 10-day crusade also had a tinge of anticipation; many of the estimated 50,000 crowding into the stadium had never heard the famous evangelist in the flesh.

“I’m looking forward to seeing him,” said Ken Goodner, a Redlands firefighter, as he and his wife, Lori, relaxed over a dish of ice cream. “I’ve been committed for about three years, but I argued God with everybody for about five years before that. Finally, the Lord showed me the way.”

He said his only disappointment was that work would keep him from attending any of the other nine sermons by the 67-year-old evangelist.

About an hour before Graham began his first Southern California crusade in 16 years, Marian Greco of Placentia sat alone quietly, her eyes hidden by sunglasses. Next to her was an empty tray that once contained a hot dog and a soft drink. She had removed her shoes and looked as if she were in deep thought.

Greco, a maintenance systems analyst, later said she planned to bring co-workers to other sermons during the 10-day crusade but that she had reserved opening night for herself.

God ‘Tugging’ at Her

“I’m a believer, but I haven’t been very good for the last three or four weeks--I’ve been doing things I shouldn’t be doing,” she said. “I need to be here for me tonight. I need to hear what he has to say for me.”

Greco also said God had been “tugging at me somehow” to attend Graham’s sermons. She said she would attend as many sessions as she could.

“I hear it’s going to be a whole new message every night. Besides, the message never gets old,” she said.

Although the opening night of the crusade did not quite reach the 60,000 people organizers had expected, officials are still hopeful the 10-day run will attract about 600,000. Even if crowd expectations are not met, Graham will still far surpass the 384,000 he attracted during a 1969 crusade in Anaheim, when the stadium was much smaller.

Last Stadium Crusade

Thousands of local volunteers have been preparing for this crusade since late last year. Graham has said the event would probably be his last stadium crusade in America. He is scheduled to preach in Romania later this year.

Graham, who reached international acclaim during a tent revival in Los Angeles in 1949, has a special fondness for Southern California. Before he began the crusade, he said the area had become a great “multiracial, multi-language” center.

In order to reach a wider audience, his crusade is being simultaneously translated in 14 languages. About 8,000 people heard his message Friday night in a language other than English--with Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans and Latinos composing the majority of the people sitting in the sections reserved for non-English speakers.