Happy Birthday, Billy!

Published
by
Michael Comfort
on November 7, 2008
in Just for fun
.

Today is Billy Graham’s 90th birthday!

(You can per­son­ally wish this remark­able man a Happy Birth­day here.)

Here he is in a pic­ture with the famous (around here anyway) Four Flats quartet.

Dick Cadd, Ron Cre­celius, Norval Hadley and Harlow Ankeny gained fame in the 1950s when the Four Flats won sev­eral bar­ber­shop fes­ti­vals. Later they trav­eled world-​wide in min­istry for World Vision.

5 Responses to “Happy Birthday, Billy!”

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  1. 1 Miriam
    November 7, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    I must’ve seen this photo before, but I don’t remem­ber it. It’s nice to see the boys so young and hand­some there!

  2. 2 Walt
    November 7, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    Shortly after Dick passed away I took up telecom­mut­ing from his old office. One of the items I found in his desk was the Bible given him by Billy Graham at the time this photo was taken. I often wonder, will there ever be another gen­er­a­tion like that one…

    Thanks, Mike.

  3. 3 Michael Comfort
    November 7, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Thanks Walt - that is a very inter­est­ing note, and a very good ques­tion!

    I found this pic­ture in some pub­lic­ity mate­ri­als for the 1996 Adult Fel­low­ship Camp at Twin Rocks. It really wasn’t that long ago that all four of these four men and their wives were still min­is­ter­ing together!

    Here’s the text from the brochure:

    The Four Flats quar­tet will come to Twin Rocks in Sep­tem­ber to lead Adult Fel­low­ship Camp 1996. This encore per­for­mance of the famous bar­ber­shop quar­tet will be unique: in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing lively enter­tain­ment through music, the group will team with their wives to lead wor­ship ser­vices, preach mes­sages and teach classes under the theme “God and Us.” Harlow Ankeny, Dick Cadd, Ron Cre­celius and Norval Hadley gained fame in the 1950s when they won sev­eral bar­ber­shop fes­ti­vals. Later they trav­eled world-​wide in min­istry for World Vision. The group even­tu­ally dis­banded, with each member con­tin­u­ing indi­vid­u­ally in sig­nif­i­cant Chris­t­ian min­istry. Yet upon occa­sion the Four Flats reemerge to charm audi­ences with their hilar­ity and delight­ful music.

  4. 4 Paula Hampton
    November 7, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    Thanks, Mike, for post­ing the pic­ture and also send­ing it to me in dig­i­tal form. I have sev­eral copies tucked away in the midst of huge boxes of mom and dad’s stuff — includ­ing the Bible from Billy Graham that Walt men­tioned above. The quar­tet sang in the Okala­homa City Cru­sade in 1956 (I think). They worked with World Vision (out of So. Calif.) from 1956 to 1962. Being on stage with Billy Graham, and inter­act­ing with Cliff Bar­rows (music/choir direc­tor for the cru­sades) was a high­light of their lives.

  5. 5 Lynne (Ankeny) Smith
    November 10, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    Hey MIke,
    Thanks for post­ing this photo. I had heard about Billy Graham’s birth­day the other day and I’ve been wait­ing for the chance to see this. Very inter­est­ing.

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