Billy Graham: I Vowed I’d Never Be a Public Speaker

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks on January 10, 2009

Billy Graham gave his first speech in 1930 as a tween. He portrayed Uncle Sam, complete with a long beard and tailcoat, in a school pageant.

“My knees shook, my hands perspired,” Billy Graham wrote in his 1997 autobiography Just As I Am, “and I vowed to myself that I would never be a public speaker!”

His principal, Mrs. Boylston, thought otherwise and told Billy’s mother that he had a gift for public speaking.