LEATHER BOY

...Billy [Graham] wears old suits that ... look like they came from a JCPenney store, unlike [his son] Franklin [Graham], who collects handmade cowboy boots and leather jackets....
WashPost, 13 Dec. 2006

Fascinating article in yesterday's WashPost about the struggle inside the family of 88-year-old evangelist Billy Graham. Eldest son Franklin, the jet-setting, fast-driving heir to the family business and director of Boone's own Samaritan's Purse, wants to bury his parents in Charlotte on the grounds of a kind of fundamentalist theme park, complete with talking cow (we're NOT making that up). His mother Ruth, 86, opposes those plans. She insists she'll be buried in the mountains of western North Carolina. Her youngest son Ned, Franklin's little brother, sides with his mother, as do at least some of their three sisters.

It's a little creepy that Franklin is willing to plan his future fund-raising around the buried bodies of his parents as part of a tourist trap in Charlotte.