When he was young, people put William Franklin Graham III under a microscope and whispered the word "Trouble" - with a big "T."
People will talk when you're Billy Graham's oldest son and the evangelist's associates catch you chain-smoking Marlboros and chugging whiskey between crusades.Eventually, Franklin Graham made his own peace with God. Then it wasn't long before people put him under a spotlight again and whispered the word "Successor" - with a big "S."
"This is the honest truth: My father and I have never discussed it," says Graham of reports he is the heir apparent. "I'm not trying to position myself as a leader in the Third World or as the leader of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. . . . But I am ready to do whatever my Father in Heaven has ahead for me, and that's what matters."
Franklin Graham's voice is hauntingly similar to his father's, and his lanky frame and friendly manner invite comparisons. But he avoids copy-cat pulpit mannerisms, and his razor-sharp humor comes from his mother.
The Graham staff recently said the 73-year-old evangelist is in the early stages of Parkinson's disease. Franklin, 40, said he was open to taking on much of his father's work.
After getting kicked out of college, the 19-year-old Franklin convinced his parents he needed a Land Rover for "missions work" in Turkey. He crossed Europe with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a fifth of whiskey. "He said he could drive better if he was relaxed," Ruth Graham told friends.
Finally, he found a Bible verse he couldn't dodge. During a stay near the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, he read 1 Corinthians 10:13: "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."
Franklin Graham poured himself into work in Lebanon, India, Zaire, El Salvador and elsewhere. Today he has a graduate degree in business and is president of Samaritan's Purse and World Medical Mission Inc., two agencies based in Boone, N.C., that find money and medical volunteers for missions and relief work.
Billy Graham now schedules crusades and other projects two years at a time. If his father needs help, Franklin is ready.