Ray Hodge Commentary

              

Frequently someone will ask me when and where Joyce and I are planning a trip, and my answer for several months has been that our considerable traveling to several doctors has occupied us or prevented us from venturing very far. The prospects of some travel are better now, however, because both of us are on a “come back in six months” basis with our doctors. That frequency seems to be about normal or better from what I hear other people our age say.

We did take a long one-day trip on August 30 which I want to tell you about, when we traveled to charlotte to visit the Billy Graham Library, and returned via Spencer near Salisbury, to visit the North Carolina Transportation Museum.

We had considered a visit to the Billy Graham Library, but thought because of the distance from here it would likely require an overnight there. Then we were invited to travel with a group from Raleigh’s Tabernacle Baptist Church, among whom were Tom and Mildred Wood, Mildred having been a roommate of Joyce’s at Meredith College. The trip was organized by Peggy Holland, the church’s Minister of music, who many years ago served in the same capacity at Yates Baptist Church in Durham during my twelve and one-half years there as pastor. She and her husband George have used Holiday Travels as carriers, which was the case this time, with Lawson Parrish as the capable driver of the new Provost coach. There were forty-five of us making the trip, with no one under the age of sixty-five. We were still having those ninety-plus degree days, but the coach was quite comfortable temperature-wise and for riding.

Joyce and I arose sharply at 5:15 AM on that Thursday, having only a glass of orange juice, since breakfast would come later. Leaving Smithfield by 6:15, and having good fortune with the early morning traffic, we were in Raleigh by 7:15, when we stopped by the house in West Raleigh of my friend and computer programmer, James Stewart, whom I had called the night before to say I would leave on his doorstep a computer I was no longer using. Without going in we drove on three or four miles west on Leesville Road to the relocated church, which we reached by 7:25. Except for two couples waiting in their cars in the parking lot we were the first ones there, but soon others came, and by 8:05 all of us were on board and heading toward I-40 West.

About 9:00 o’clock we stopped at a new and large K&W cafeteria in Burlington for a hearty breakfast. Leaving at 10:05 we reached Charlotte and the Billy Graham Library about noon. The Library is located at 4330 Westmont Drive about four miles off I-85, exit 33 via the Billy Graham Parkway, and near the Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Our tour of the facility lasted a little more than an hour and until about 1:05 PM, when we enjoyed a buffet lunch in the same building at the Graham Brothers Dairy Bar.

The Billy Graham Library, a 40,000-square-foot, family friendly, mobility-impaired-accessible complex is designed to look like a huge barn and silo as might have existed during Billy’s early life on a dairy farm. The facility is not a library in the sense of containing dozens of stacks of books, although many books are in evidence. Instead, it houses many rooms filled with state-of-the art audio and video exhibits, Billy Graham’s personal library, and collections of family and ministry-related materials. Upon entering the building at the foot of a forty- foot glass cross visitors are greeted by a life-like animated Elsie the cow. The tour took us through several rooms which trace Billy Graham’s life on the farm, his early ministry, his wife Ruth’s life and their marriage partnership, and his global preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. A volunteer stands by in each room, with the doors opening and closing in a time-sequence which allows ample opportunity to see and hear the special emphases being made in each room. As we moved along through the rooms I wondered how so much space could be available in the barn structure, only to discover that the less-noticeable building to the barn’s side contains much of the exhibit space. Visitors can experience a variety of exhibits, multimedia displays, and films, all designed to appeal to casual visitors, spiritual seekers, researchers, historians, and schoolchildren. And the evangelistic outreach of Billy Graham’s ministry is apparent throughout the facility. The exhibits allow visitors to journey through the history of Billy Graham’s humble beginnings on the family dairy farm to become a beloved worldwide evangelist, a confidant of Presidents and world leaders, and one of the most respected men in history.

To the front and side of the complex is the Graham family home place, a handsome two-story brick house which was originally located a few miles away, but was disassembled brick by brick, moved, and reassembled at the Library site.

After leaving Charlotte about 2:30 PM our coach took us through Salisbury east to Spencer, where we toured the North Carolina Transportation Museum, a second visit for Joyce and me. Spencer was for many years the site of a large service shop for steam engines and other rolling stock of the Southern Railroad, similar to Rocky Mount’s facility for trains of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. The exhibits are positioned in several scattered buildings. From the Barber Junction reception building with public toilet facilities, we walked about one hundred and fifty yards from where the coach was permitted to park to enter the first exhibit area and bookstore, which is air- conditioned. Joyce did not want to walk to the several scattered buildings, having been there before and because of the heat. So she and her friend, Mildred Wood, stayed in the first building, which had many exhibits and a store with books and other items related to railroads and state history.

I and some others walked to the large engine roundhouse, where some of our group took a 360-degree ride, in an area surrounded by three or four buildings containing vintage steam and diesel engines, utility and recovery vehicles, and railroad cars. It was a pleasant and complete surprise for me to see among the engines, the “Champion,” a long and powerful purple and silver diesel engine, capable of 117-mile-per-hour speeds. It had two huge headlights, one above the other, with one of them oscillating in a figure-eight configuration. Seeing the “Champion” kindled for me pleasant memories of long-past years when that engine pulled a silver streamliner at eighty miles-per-hour speeds at night through Kenly and other communities on the main North-South ACL. Its novelty in those long-ago days drew so much interest that during the early weeks of its operation it was not uncommon to see a crowd of hundreds gathered to watch it pass. I was often among the watchers, since that was pretty exciting then in a little community like Kenly.

We concluded our trip from Spencer to Raleigh, stopping once at an I-85 rest facility, and reaching Tabernacle Baptist Church at 7:15 PM. Then we drove to Smithfield by 8:00, where we had a sandwich. This was an enjoyable trip for us and one which some of you may want to take.

And I must tell you that about 9:50 the next morning I answered the phone and heard a long-awaited call saying, “Hello Dad and Mom, this is your son Ben calling from Winston-Salem. After about seventeen months duty with a full year in Iraq, Ben, an Army chaplain (LTC) and his 105th Engineer Group from Winston-Salem, had flown in to Pope Air force Base about midnight on Thursday, where his wife Kate, and two children, John and Eleanor met him and drove to Winston-Salem. And that, added to the trip, made these parents happy and thankful.