His job-related travel took him away from his family for months at a time. Once, after a long business trip, it took him several minutes to recognize his own son.
Both his boys eventually went through rebellious periods in which they experimented with drugs.So, who is going to listen to this man for advice on Christian parenting? Only hundreds of millions of people.
The Rev. Billy Graham, like many religious leaders whose job requires a lot of travel, often found it necessary to preach to others what he had difficulty practicing himself: the need for fathers to spend time with their children.
In his new autobiography, Graham frankly discusses the ways his religious calling took a toll on his family life, and the tears that filled his eyes more than once as he prepared to board a train or plane for preaching assignments throughout the world.
For those intimidated by the images of the Graham family projected in some of his TV specials - a modern-day version of the Waltons - "Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham," published by HarperCollins, offers more personal insights into how one of the nation's most respected men of God had to struggle through family tensions.
Given his own family situation, Graham writes that he has only respect and sympathy "for the courageous and committed single parents who . . . have to carry the burden alone."
His travels took him before 230 million people in 180 countries and territories.
But one of the incidents he remembers most vividly is his youngest son coming up to greet him following an extended absence.
"As we drove into the yard, I saw a beautiful little child wandering out to greet us. Even after I got out of the car, it took some minutes before I realized it was Ned," Graham recalled in the book.
His wife and five children are the only ones who can tell what the extended periods of separation meant to them.
"For myself, as I look back, I now know that I came through those years much the poorer both psychologically and emotionally. I missed so much by not being home to see the children grow and develop," Graham writes.
On the positive side, however, Graham writes with pride about how his children are all doing well today. His oldest son, Franklin, is a successful evangelist and the successor-in-waiting to his father's ministry. Ned leads an international ministry that has had success distributing Bibles in China.
Except in emergencies, Graham said, he and his wife, Ruth, never let a day go by without Bible reading and prayer in the home.
Even during their rebellious periods, Graham said he tried to let all his children know that he loved them no matter what they did and that he wanted them to discover "God's perfect plan for each of them."
All in all, the delights of parenting greatly outweighed the regrets, Graham said.
"The mistakes we did make were not fatal, and we both thank the Lord for that. And that bolsters our faith that He will do the same for the generations coming after us," Graham writes.
Still, he now advises younger evangelists to not follow his example of extended time away from home.
Looking back, he realizes there were meetings and engagements that could have been turned down.
"Every day I was absent from my family is gone forever," he said.
Perhaps the book's most poignant reflection on the price paid by evangelists who sacrifice family life for their ministry is in Ruth Graham's poem, "Sons":
"But what of the ones forsaken,
Lord,
even for you?
These sons now grown
who've never known
fathers who had undertaken
to leave all and follow You?
Some sons,
wounded beyond repair,
bitter, confused, lost,
these are the ones
for whom
mothers weep,
bringing to You
in prayer
nights they cannot sleep -
these Lord,
are what it cost."