Wheaton

Billy Graham was the skinniest kid Mary Lloys Rice had ever seen, and his hair was glorious. In 1940, Mary Lloys—my mom—plus her five sisters and my grandparents had moved a thousand miles north from Dallas and into their new home in Wheaton, Illinois on West Franklin Street, a big yellow frame house with white trim

I can play the clip in my head any time I want. The sun shines brightly on a clear, crisp day in November 1961. I am coming in off the playground with my sixth-grade class at Holmes School in Wheaton, Illinois. The boys are horsing around, jockeying for position in line, cutting up. We’ve just come up a slight, grassy incline onto the hard, cracked asphalt.

Mr. Parks was an old man who lived with his sister in a big yellow house next door to us on College Avenue in Wheaton, Illinois. On frequent summer nights beginning when I was eight years old, Mr.