Ruth Graham

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Ruth Bell Graham is the wife of the noted Christian evangelist Billy Graham.

She was born in 1920 in Qingjiang, China, where her parents worked as medical missionaries. Many experiences of these years in China were related in John Pollock's book A Foreign Devil in China, a biography of her surgeon father Dr. L. Nelson Bell. As a child, Graham grew up in China and in Pyongyang, the capital of present-day North Korea. At the age of 17, she left the Far East to attend Wheaton College in Illinois, where she met her future husband, a fellow student. Ruth Bell and Billy Graham were married in 1943. The couple has five children one of whom is Franklin Graham.

Graham is the author of many Christian books, as well as being a regular contributor for newspapers and magazines. In 1966, she founded the Ruth and Billy Graham Children's Health Center in Asheville, North Carolina, with which she is actively involved.

Graham lives with her husband at their house, Little Piney Cove, in Montreat, North Carolina. Her biography, A Time for Remembering (later reissued as Ruth: A Portrait), was an early work of novelist Patricia Cornwell.

As of 2007, Ruth's health has deteriorated considerably and she remains mostly bedridden in her home.[1]