A room full of media members from across the state and nation were chatting and cracking jokes moments before the Rev. Billy Graham was escorted into a press conference at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis on June 1, 1999.
East Columbus Christian Church pastor Ron Bridgewater, then a part-time morning disc jockey for local Christian radio station WJLR, remembered the scene hours after Graham’s death was announced Wednesday morning.
“All of the sudden, there was tremendous silence,” Bridgewater said. “It was not a celebrity thing at all, but like a strong sense of respect in the atmosphere. It changed in a second like someone flipped a switch. You don’t easily forget something like that.”
Bridgewater got Graham to talk during the press conference about traditional church hymns versus Christian pop-rock music in services, and said there was room for both.
Graham was promoting his 1999 Indianapolis crusade June 3 to 6 at the now-razed RCA Dome, an event that attracted support from more than a dozen local churches providing volunteers, counselors and choir vocalists. They were among more than 193,000 people who were part of Graham’s four-day crusade.
Columbus resident Bob Langdon served as a volunteer counselor for people who came forward to make a Christian commitment at the Indianapolis crusade. But what he recalled even better Wednesday was re-dedicating his life to Christ as a 21-year-old college student in the 1960s at a Graham crusade in Columbus, Ohio.
He later decided to go into the ministry, and served for 45 years until 2016 — partly because of Graham’s influence.
“I always was impressed with Billy Graham because of his humility, unlike a lot of the televangelists out there today,” Langdon said.
Columbus resident Dave Ketchum smiled when remembering that the Jumbotron screen in the RCA Dome showed wife Sue and son Andrew up close during part of the opening-night gathering of 50,000 people. Ketchum had long admired Graham, dating to his younger years when his mom watched Graham on network television — an unusual occurrence for Christian ministries.
“He loved the Lord, and he loved his family,” Ketchum said. “And he lived in a way that was beyond reproach.”
