Sept. 20, 1964 - Evangelist Billy Graham preached to two packed houses last night.
One was 14,000 strong at the Boston Garden.
The other was in standing-room-only quarters at Izzy Ort’s Golden Nugget bar (pictured) on Essex Street.
In his first sermon, the congregation listened in rapt silence.
At the Golden Nugget, he stopped the twist band after being invited by Ort to speak to the crowd. Dr. Graham invited everybody to attend the Greater Boston Crusade he is conducting at the Garden.
They didn’t all quiet down.
“He’s a phony. I wouldn’t bother listening to him,” snarled a patron as his female companion climbed upon the booth seat and urged him to get up and listen.
“Well, if you don’t want to hear him, shut your mouth,” she snarled back as she leaned forward to catch the evangelist’s words.
“I didn’t think I’d be preaching to a congregation in a place like this,” Billy said as he took the mike, and most of the audience laughed and cheered.
The bartender pounded the mahogany top and yelled: “You tell ‘em, Billy!” as he slid another beer to a customer.
When the evangelist had earlier climbed out of his car on Washington St. in front of the King of Pizza Café, the usual Saturday night crowd in the bars and game rooms soon saw him and surged outside, stalling traffic.
“You’re the greatest, Billy,” yelled a leather-jacketed youth, who promptly received a reply:
“Thank you. Here’s a ticket to the Garden for the Monday night Crusade. Can you come?”
“You bet I’ll be there,” came the reply, and the unusual walk began.
This was the “Combat Zone” of Boston. Packed into this area are probably most of the bawdiest, loudest gin mills in the New Boston, and they’ve been there since it was the Old Boston.
A blonde wearing a sweater, cut quite low, stood and looked at the evangelist as he walked toward Essex St.
“Who is it?” she asked. Her companion recognized the famed clergyman, and she turned and scurried away, saying, “I don’t want him to see me here.”
Billy kept handing out tickets to the Crusade. Then came a request for autographs from a group of high-school youngsters.
“Somebody lifted my pen,” he said as he towered over the crowd.
A quick-witted youth shouted: “Judge not, Billy, lest ye be judged.”
The crowd roared, and Graham moved in front of the Woodbine Café, where a young man pushed forward for a theological discussion.
“I studied theology,” he said, “and I couldn’t find any real evidence that there is a God.”
The crowd muttered at this intrusion, but it didn’t faze Dr. Graham.
“Don’t you know,” he replied, “that nobody can prove there is a God? You have to accept it on faith.”
So it went, past the Woodbine and Playland and into the Golden Nugget.
Ort told his guest star that he had been running the business since 1932, and Billy replied, “That’s longer than I’ve been preaching the Gospel.”
Out of tickets to the Monday Crusade, he passed out printed invitations to attend and talked with almost everyone who wanted to say hello.
The crowd was with him. A typical comment came from a patron: “He talks right from the heart. He really grabs you!”
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