(W.T.) Watson (the college's founder) lost some potential givers to the school."ĭuring his 3½ years in Hillsborough County, Graham ministered to the down-and-out at gospel missions on Franklin and Jefferson streets downtown, in West Tampa, at mobile home parks and in the city stockade.
After his tour, "those people never came back to Florida Bible Institute again. "Well, I had never heard of the Gasparilla and I'd never been to Tampa," Graham said in 1976. In January 1937, he transferred to the Florida Bible Institute, which occupied a Spanish-style former country club on the banks of the Hillsborough River in Temple Terrace.Ī day after arriving, Graham was pressed to take a group of visitors on a driving tour of Tampa during the height of Gasparilla, the city's raucous pirate invasion and parade. Though Graham was interested in Bible study, he also liked sports, girls and sunshine. He had spent an unhappy semester at Bob Jones College in Tennessee, which was more boot camp than seminary. Graham came not as an established preacher but as a skinny, 18-year-old student. And, of course, nothing ever really changed." Most, like Billy Sunday, tended to end their sermons "with a summons to make Tampa more moral. "Tampa attracted, beginning in the early 20th century, a remarkable number of crusaders and evangelists," said University of South Florida historian Gary Mormino. RELATED COVERAGE: Preacher to presidents dead at 99
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