THE MAYOR'S RACE OF 1935: The day Tampa hit 'rock bottom'īy the late 1930s, Graham's preaching drew up to 1,000 people.Īt the Tampa Gospel Mission off Franklin Street, "many of them were drunk when they came in," Graham told the Tampa Tribune in 1998. The 1935 mayor's race required the National Guard to set up machine gun placements in downtown Tampa to quell armed factions, shootings and attempts at ballot-stuffing. As their influence grew, so did political corruption.īribery marred the 1934 election. On the night of the biggest social of the year, she told him she couldn't, that she wanted to marry his friend Charles Massey instead.įor months afterward, Graham went for long walks at night, doubting himself, questioning everything.Īnd after Prohibition ended in 1933, Tampa mobsters muscled in on bolita, Ybor City's popular but illegal numbers game. Soon after arriving in Temple Terrace, Graham began courting the dark-haired Emily Cavanaugh and asked her to marry him. From shore, classmates teased, "How many converts did you get today, Billy?" There, he would preach to birds, alligators, cypress stumps. On his days off, he would paddle a canoe to a little island in the river. He served as president of his 11-member class, edited the yearbook and worked in the cafeteria to pay his school fees. Graham was not much of a scholar, but he was popular. ![]() "He had a charisma, you could sort of feel it when he walked in the room. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) in 1998. "He had talent and grace and dignity that was really beyond his years," the late Charles Massey of Tampa, who roomed next door to Graham at the institute, told the St. So he transferred to the Florida Bible Institute, then housed in a Spanish-style former country club on the banks of the Hillsborough River in Temple Terrace.Įven as a raw teenager, Graham's presence foreshadowed his career as an evangelist.
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