At 103 years of age, George Beverly
Shea is still serving the Lord

MONTREAT,
NC – (ANS)- It is hard to believe that George Beverly Shea is about to
reach the grand old age of 103, but this amazing man will celebrate this great
achievement Wednesday, February 1, 2012 in Montreat, North Carolina, where he
lives with his wife Karlene, and close to his dear friend, Billy Graham.

And while he won’t be partying like
a teenager, the youthful centenarian will celebrate the day in the company of
his family and in quiet reflection, reading greetings from around the world now
pouring in to him.

He says he is especially thankful
for the dear people with whom he has ministered and traveled the world since
the day he met Billy Graham. “For all these years, the fellowship of the
BGEA team has been precious as I have sought to serve the Lord,” says Shea.

“Bev” Shea holds the
record for singing to the most people in person because his wonderful
bass-baritone has been a part of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Team for so many
years.

He has been nominated for 10 Grammy
Awards, won a Grammy in 1965, was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame
by the Gospel Music Association in 1978, and in 1996 was also inducted into the
National Religious Broadcasting Hall of Fame.

Bev Shea also was honored by the The
Recording Academy who honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in
conjunction with the 2011 GRAMMY Awards.

Some time back, I was interviewed
Bev about his extraordinary life in which he has recorded over 70 albums of
timeless songs and classic hymns. One of his latest at the time was a CD called
“I’d Rather Have Jesus” (Word Records), which is a 20-song treasury
celebrating his life and ministry.

He began the interview with a
surprise. Although he is known as “America’s Beloved Gospel Singer,”
he was actually born in Canada!

“Yes, I was born in Canada; it
was in a town called Winchester, Ontario, which is 35 miles from Ottawa, the
capital city of Canada,” Bev Shea admitted. “My dad was a preacher
there for 20 years and then he went to Ottawa for 10 years. After that he moved
down to the New York area. I followed him there during my 20s.

“His final pastorate was in
Syracuse, New York and he decided he’d better go to Heaven.”

Bev then spoke about his time at Houghton
College in Houghton, New York.

“The college is near Buffalo
and Rochester and is a fine college,” he said.

He also revealed that it was his
mother who first spotted his musical talent.

“I’m in the middle of eight
children and my mother noticed that I couldn’t stay away from the piano,”
he said. “When I was very young, before the others came along, I was
banging on the piano and so she took time to teach me some chords, like people
do on a guitar these days. I took lessons for a while, but I found out that I
would rather just develop different chords in all the different keys and play
by ear. I don’t do it for people today, but I still play like this for my wife
and for my own enjoyment morning and night.”

I then asked Mr. Shea how he first met Billy Graham.

“Oh, that was marvelous,”
he said. “I had worked for 10 years during the Twenties in New York in the
medical department of the Mutual Life Insurance Company,” he said.
“During that time, I met Dr. Houghton, Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church,
and he heard me sing a few songs. Then he was transferred to Chicago to become
the president of Moody Bible Institute and we met again at a Bible conference
in Pennsylvania. Dr. Houghton said, ‘I’d like to ask you if you have ever
considered Christian broadcasting. I told him that I didn’t know it was
available. That’s how it went in 1939. I accepted and went to Chicago, staying
there five and a half years.

“One morning, there was a rap
on my office door. I looked out and there was a tall young man with blond hair
and we shook hands. He was 21 and I was 31. It was Billy Graham and he had traveled
in from Wheaton College on a train just to say ‘hello.’ He said that he
listened to my morning hymn show called ‘Hymns From The Chapel.’ That’s how we
first got acquainted.

“I came into this work with Mr.
Graham in 1947 after we had exchanged letters and talked on the phone. He said
he wanted me to be his gospel singer. I thanked him, but told him the only
gospel singers I’ve ever heard about would sing a verse or two and stop and
talk awhile. ‘Would I have to do that?’ I asked him. He chuckled and said, ‘I
hope not.’
“With that, I said, ‘Well, I’d like to come with you. That was in November
of 1947 and I’ve been with him ever since.”

Bev said that his first meetings
with Mr. Graham took place at the Old Armory in Charlotte, North Carolina.

What did he sing on that first
night?

“I sang ‘I Will Sing The
Wondrous Story,’ the old congregational hymn. And I remember that someone in
the audience gave that information to Billy Graham’s mother and she wrote me a
note in which she said, ‘Whenever you come around, please sing that
again.’”

Memories of the 1949 Los Angeles
crusade

Bev Shea then talked about his
memories of Billy Graham’s historic “Big Tent” crusade in Los
Angeles, which launched the young evangelist into international prominence.

“Yes, we had those tents at the
corner of Washington and Hill Streets,” he said. “It was supposed to
be for only three weeks, but the Lord was moving mightily and different ones
came to the Lord such as Stuart Hamblen, who wrote, ‘It Is No Secret’ and ‘This
Old House.’ Because of what was happening, the local committee asked Mr. Graham
to continue, so we were there for a whole eight weeks.”

I asked him to recall how this
became the turning point for Billy Graham.
“Well, of course that happened when William Randolph Hearst [the newspaper
magnet] issued the directive to his staff to ‘Puff Graham.’ That happened, and
we saw more and more people come to the meetings after that.”

How Stuart Hamblen wrote “It Is
No Secret.”

Bev then shared how Hamblen came to
write “It Is No Secret.”

“What happened was that Stuart
Hamblen had accepted Christ at the Los Angeles meetings and he’d done some
movies with John Wayne,” he said. “One day, the story goes, John
Wayne was walking along Hollywood Boulevard there and the two met up. John
Wayne had read about Stuart’s conversion and asked him, ‘What’s this I hear
about you Stuart, going forward at Mr. Graham’s meetings?’ They apparently
talked for a while and then Stuart said, ‘It’s no secret what God did for me.
If he can do it for me, He can do for anyone.’ And the movie star said, ‘That
sounds like a song to me.’ I’m not sure if that’s true or not. And so Stuart
Hamblen sat down at his Hammond organ at home and wrote this wonderful song
that I still sing today at Mr. Graham’s meetings.”

I then told Bev Shea that the first
I had heard him sing was in 1954 when I was part of a massive crowd of 120,000
at London’s Wembley Stadium. I asked him for his recollections of those times
in the UK.

“The Harringay arena seated
some 12,000 and it was filled every night,” he began. “And then
someone thought of the idea of carrying the meetings by landlines to other
parts of the United Kingdom. During the War, they had extra phone lines that
they used and somebody saw those idle lines and got them all hooked up. And so
one night we had some fifty areas hooked up to Harringay. They were listening
in churches, auditoriums in Wales and Scotland, and Ireland. It was
marvelous!”

Winston Churchill

I wondered if Bev Shea had ever met
Winston Churchill during his visits to Britain.

“I never met him, but I heard
Mr. Churchill in Parliament and I also heard his speech in Ibrox Stadium,
Glasgow, when he was running again for Parliament. He talked for 70 minutes. I
was sitting beside Mr. Graham and he, and I, were very impressed with Mr.
Churchill’s oratory.”

The Queen Mother

He then spoke about an experience
with the Queen Mother. “I never got to meet her before she passed away in
her sleep in March, 2002,” Bev said. “But back in the fifties, when
she was Queen she and King George VI [her husband] decided to visit Washington,
DC, and Mrs. Roosevelt entertained them at the White House.

“There was some entertainment
that night. They had Chief White Feather, an Indian who was an opera singer. He
sang two arias and then, when the audience wanted more, he said, ‘May I sing
something from my heart’ and then he sang, ‘I’d Rather Have Jesus,’ the song I
had the privilege of writing the music to, but not the words; they were written
by Rhea Miller. After he had sung that song, the Queen looked at him and said,
‘That song bespeaks the sentiment of my heart and that of my husband.’ Isn’t
that beautiful?”

Richard Nixon

Bev Shea then spoke of his
encounters with Richard Nixon who attended the 1957 New York Crusade at Yankee
Stadium.
“He came on a very hot night and we had about 90,000 people there,”
he recalled.

I then asked if he had ever sung for
Nixon at the White House after he became president.

“Yes, I did,” he replied.
“It was in the East Room and Mr. Graham spoke at the very first service he
held there. Nixon had decided to hold Sunday morning services and not everybody
agreed with the idea, but he liked to do that. Congressmen and others came, and
I sang, ‘How Great Thou Art.’ Then we had had breakfast upstairs. Being a
Canadian I thought that was really something.

“Afterwards, Nixon sat down at
an old banged up Steinway piano and went up and down the keys and he began
singing, ‘He will hold me fast, for my savior loves me, so he will hold me
fast.’ I wondered where he ever heard that. I kept inquiring and I understand
when he was thirteen or fourteen years of age he went to the Paul Rader
meetings in Los Angeles and that was the signature song every night for the choir.”

Favorite hymns

I then asked Mr. Shea to name some
of his favorite hymns.

“I’m never tired of ‘How Great
Thou Art,’” he said. “It seems like I’ve sung it so many times but
the words are almost like scripture, you know. And there are others that I like
when I go to my the organ I have at home here or the piano I often sing, ‘I Saw
One Hanging In A Tree.’ and also ‘And can it be.’ And then ‘Great Is Thy
Faithfulness’ is another that I love. I knew the man who wrote the music for
that. His name was William Runyan and he worked at Moody Bible Institute.”

Guinness Book of World Records

Bev Shea then revealed that he has
been honored by the Guinness Book of World Records for having sung before more
people 220 million — more than anyone else in history.

“They sent me a certificate
that my wife, Karlene, framed and put on the wall here at my home,” he
said. “The truth is that they didn’t come to hear me; they came to hear
Billy Graham.”

I interjected by saying, “Yes,
but they came to hear you sing as well!”

Health

Bev suffered a heart attack in 2004.
He spoke about his hospitalization in the same hospital where Billy Graham was
also being treated.

“I wrote him a little note to that said, ‘I don’t like to leave you here,
but they say I can go home now.’”

When asked how he would describe his
friend, Billy Graham, he replied, “If he’d never met the Lord, he still
would have been a gracious gentleman. But he met the Lord, and He transformed
his life at a young age, gave him that great gift of just interpreting the Word
and bringing in the net.”

Bev Shea said he meant by
“bringing in the net” — the invitation to receive Christ at the end
of each service.

“When I sit there on the
platform and pray, I have to admit that once in a while I peek and see them coming
forward by the hundreds,” he said. “What a thrill that is. And his
son, Franklin, is being blessed and is doing very well. He’s quite a preacher.
Some time back, I went down to Mobile, Alabama, with my wife and he had me do
some numbers. We also did New Orleans with Billy and Cliff Barrows.”

His second marriage

“It has been 20 years of
bliss,” he said at the time. “I was a widower for 10 years in a
suburb of Chicago and that’s a long time. When we were over in Korea in 1984,
Billy brought me into his room and said, ‘I’ve been talking to Ruth my wife in
Montreat this morning on the phone and we think that 10 years is enough, and so
he mentioned Karlene’s name.”

He was right, and Bev and Karlene were married in Montreat, North Carolina.

“Mr. Graham didn’t do the
service,” said Bev. “We had the pastor of our church here, and he put on
his nice robe and we were married in Billy’s home.”

He said that he and Billy Graham
keep in touch regularly. “He called me on the phone just the other
day,” he said. “He lives just a mile away from me.”

What an example, that he, Mr. Graham
and the other veteran, Cliff Barrows, are for those who think we should retire
at 65!

Note: I’d like to thank Robin Frost
for transcribing this interview.

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About Dan Wooding

Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 46 years. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST
(Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service
(ANS).

Wooding was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC., and now hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on KWVE in Southern California and which is also carried on the Calvary Radio Network throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK. Wooding also a regular contributor to The Weekend Stand on the Crawford Broadcasting Network, and a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 192 countries. He is the author of some 43 books. Two of the latest include his autobiography, “From Tabloid to Truth”, which is published by Theatron Books.

To order a copy, press this link. Wooding, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, also recently released “God’s Ambassadors in Japan” which is available at amazon.com.

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