Billy Graham recognized God’s call on his life as a young man, and as part of his college education, he attended the Florida Bible Institute near Tampa, Florida. He tells of his arrival at the campus in his autobiography, Just As I Am:

“Riding in my father’s 1937 green Plymouth, we arrived at the campus of Florida Bible Institute one morning late in January. It was located in Temple Terrace, fifteen miles east of Tampa. After the damp and dismal autumn in the mountains of east Tennessee, western Florida seemed like Paradise to me. The Institute itself was housed in a Spanish-style country-club hotel with several outbuildings. All had creamy pink stucco and tiled roofs, with wrought-iron railings along red-brick steps. Surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped eighteen-hole golf course on the banks of the Hillsborough River, the buildings were part of an exclusive residential subdivision that went broke in 1929.”

It was on that golf course one moonlit night in 1938 that Billy Graham surrendered to God’s call on his life to be a preacher of the Gospel. He remembers in his autobiography:

“In the moonlight, a soft southern breeze stirred the wispy Spanish moss that draped the trees on the golf course. I never felt so alone in my life—or so close t God. I walked through the late-night hours, struggling with the Holy Spirit over the call of God to be a minister. That was the last thing I wanted to be, and I had used all kinds of rationalizations to convince God to let me do something else… I got down on my knees at the edge of one of the greens. Then I prostrated myself on the dewy turf. ‘O God,’ I sobbed, ‘if you want me to serve you, I will.’ The moonlight, the moss, the breeze, the green, the golf course—all the surroundings stayed the same. No sign in the heavens. No voice from above. But in my spirit I knew I had been called to the ministry. And I knew my answer was yes.”

Billy Graham continued at Florida Bible Institute, graduating in 1940. Throughout his time at the school, he sought multiple opportunities to evangelize on street corners and he preached at many church services, honing his skills for one day preaching in front of thousands in crowded stadiums. His extracurricular time during his college years was not spent only in the pulpit. During his senior year at Florida Bible Institute, he was class president and helped edit the class yearbook.

Find out more about Billy Graham’s early years in the Library’s Journey of Faith tour. Plan your visit today.