A Photographer on a Crusade : For 30 Years, Russ Busby Has Recorded the Career of Evangelist Billy Graham

Whenever the Rev. Billy Graham has preached at massive rallies or met foreign heads of state, the same wiry photographer has dogged his footsteps for more than 30 years, documenting the ministry of this century’s most successful evangelist.

Russ Busby of Northridge started working for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. in 1956 and became the chief crusade photographer in the early 1960s.

Along the way, the amiable Busby has taken the family Christmas card photos at the Grahams’ mountain home in Montreat, N.C., adding informal shots of the Graham children.

Now, the man known as “Uncle Russ” is pictorially recording a major transition in the $88-million Graham empire.

One of those Graham children, Franklin, now 43, two months ago was named first vice president in the evangelistic organization with the right to succeed his 77-year-old father, who has Parkinson’s disease, if he becomes incapacitated. The decision ended years of speculation about a probable successor.

Busby, 65, has already shot four of Franklin’s evangelistic crusades and says he has a rapport with the younger Graham.

“He often delights in saying things that might shock a religiously reserved person, just as I do,” Busby said this week during a rare stretch of time at home, catching up on work in his Burbank office.

Busby recently returned from Bosnia where, for a week before Christmas, he photographed the distribution to children of thousands of gift-filled shoe boxes donated by Americans to Franklin’s independent ministry called Samaritan’s Purse.

“Riding in a van driven by Franklin for that long allowed me to see that he has the same kind of vision, perception and compassion for people that his father has,” Busby said.

Everyone in the Graham organization, Franklin included, is quick to note that Franklin’s “succession” of his father has not taken place yet.

T. W. Wilson, the executive assistant and longtime friend to the elder Graham, said, “Billy reminds his son, ‘I’m not dead yet.’ ”

” . . . I don’t think anybody is ever going to take Billy Graham’s place,” Wilson added, referring to the wide respect gained by the Baptist preacher.

“There will never be another Billy Graham,” echoed religion professor Randall Balmer of Barnard College in New York, who produced a 1993 PBS documentary on the evangelist.

Graham first came to national attention in 1949 when his Los Angeles tent crusade was covered extensively by publisher William Randolph Hearst’s papers and celebrities professed their conversion.

Franklin Graham may be carving out his own niche, aided by public relations experts.

In late October, as he began his first joint crusade with his father in Saskatoon, Canada, Franklin’s autobiography was published, called “Rebel With a Cause: Finally Comfortable Being Graham.” The book recalls Franklin’s smoking, drinking, fighting and expulsion from college before he turned his life around at age 22.

“I believe we can see consultants cultivating the image of a rebellious kid, even though the last vestige of rebellion occurred nearly a quarter of a century ago,” Balmer said.

At the same time, Balmer added, Franklin’s love for riding motorcycles, flying his own airplane and collecting guns (including a much-told story of his machine-gunning down a tree with more than 700 rounds of ammunition) may strike a chord with contemporaries who are filling stadiums in the all-male, evangelical Promise Keepers movement.

Yet, it is not as if Franklin was under a family mandate to follow his father.

When Busby told Billy Graham and his wife Ruth how impressed he was with their son’s preaching before a crowd of 20,000 in Raleigh, N.C., in September 1994, he said that Franklin’s mother smiled and said, “All we ever asked God to do is to help him get his life straightened out.”

Franklin’s maturing presence in the pulpit has come none too soon.

Billy Graham fainted in the midst of a Canadian crusade in June and was hospitalized in December after falling in the shower of his hotel room in New York. As a result of that injury, Franklin will substitute for his father in March at three-day crusades in Sydney and Brisbane, Australia.

“Between his age and Parkinson’s, Billy has slowed up his schedule quite a bit,” Busby said. “But when he speaks, he sounds OK--he hasn’t lost the authority in his voice.”

At a four-day crusade four months ago in Sacramento, the elder Graham averaged nearly 30,000 people a night at the 17,000-seat Arco Arena and three overflow sites--record crowds for any event at that arena. Billy Graham still plans to do a June crusade in Minneapolis and a September one in Charlotte, N.C., officials said.

Busby, who said he is 80% finished with a book on Billy Graham’s ministry, said he couldn’t ask for a more cooperative subject.

“He is so congenial that he will do almost anything we need for a picture,” Busby said. The photographer said he had read that President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to OK every White House photo of himself before it was released. “Good night, I’m glad that never happened to me,” Busby said.

“If he were a professional in the field, he could make much more than we pay him,” Wilson said. “He’s among the most valuable members of our team, and certainly the most unsung.”