Billy Graham: Skinny-Dipping with the President

There are plenty of stories about Billy Graham interacting with presidents. He’s had personal encounters with every president going back to Harry Truman, detailed in the book The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House. But two of my favorite details involve Graham going for a swim. The first, and best, has to be the minor mention that Billy Graham went skinny-dipping with President Lyndon Johnson:

“After a visit in the Oval Office, Johnson proposed a swim in the White House pool. That no one had brought a bathing suit was no deterrent; in years to come the president would often interrupt meetings to suggest and swim and needle anyone who was reluctant to strip naked and dive in a baptism in intimacy.”

A TIME magazine article described it as “an encounter that included both prayer and skinny-dipping in the White House pool.”

The second best swimming with the president story has to be from 1979 when Graham borrowed a pair of white swimming trunks from George H.W. Bush. After lunch Graham walked back to the condo alone for a nap and inadvertently walked onto a Mexican naval base. An armed guard stopped Graham and detained him for trespassing. With no identification, wearing nothing but borrowed swim trunks and facing a language barrier, Graham had a hard time explaining what he was doing. The armed guard ordered Graham to sit down on a bench until a superior officer could sort it out.

The officer eventually released the world famous evangelist, telling him to walk home barefoot on a hot sidewalk. When Graham finally returned to the condo he realized the bench he’d sat on had been freshly painted. Two green stripes crossed the seat of Bush’s swimsuit.

Graham could never get the swim trunks clean and Bush laughed it off, saying the sacrifice was worth it. Barbara Bush joked that the incident proved “unfortunate things happen even to God’s chosen people.”