c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A prominent face _ and more significantly, voice _ will be missing from the stage at Billy Graham’s crusade Oct. 7-10 in Kansas City, Mo.

George Beverly Shea, who has sung just before Graham takes the podium for nearly six decades, has been sidelined by a recent heart attack.

“I had some ticker trouble in May and the heart people say it takes a good six months … for a football player to get over something like that,” Shea said in a phone interview with Religion News Service.

At age 95, Shea has been advised that he should sit on his back-porch rocking chair rather than appear at Graham’s side. The physician’s ruling marks the first time since 1947 that the singer has had to miss a domestic crusade. He has been a fixture singing solos and joining the choir for such gospel standards as “How Great Thou Art” and his own composition, “I’d Rather Have Jesus.”

“It’s the doctor’s decision,” Shea said. “I asked Mr. Graham, `Do you take the doctor’s advice?’ He said, `Yes, I do.”’

Graham, 85, said he was disappointed to not have his close friend, who lives within a mile of him in western North Carolina, at the four-day event at Arrowhead Stadium.

“Nothing could discourage me more than to know that Bev Shea is not coming to be with us in Kansas City,” the evangelist said in a statement to RNS.

“But, he has assured me that his heart is with us and that he will be listening to the crusade programs live on WMIT, our local radio station where we live. We are counting on his prayers to help us here and we know that we will have them.”

Both Shea and Graham hope the man’s deep singing voice will return to the crusade stage at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., from Nov. 18-21.

“We’ll ask again,” Shea said of a forthcoming consultation with his doctor.

But he’s more hopeful about participating in the recently announced plans for a Graham crusade at New York’s Madison Square Garden in June 2005.

“I trust I can,” he said.

Shea said he was pleased to hear the 4,000-member choir at the Kansas City crusade plans to sing “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling” on the first night at the point when he would usually sing.

“That thrills me to hear that,” he said. “ I love that song.”

The choir members are part of a total of 18,000 volunteers from five states who are supporting the crusade. The overall volunteer corps represents 1,200 churches and 84 denominations.

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Shea was stricken with a mild heart attack on May 26, the day before he was planning to head to England for a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Graham’s first crusade in London. At the time, he spent seven days in the same hospital where Graham was being treated for a fractured pelvis.

But Shea, who was visited by Graham a couple of weeks before the Kansas City crusade, said he’s encouraged about his colleague’s health.

“He’s taking care of himself beautifully,” he said of Graham.

The Rev. William B. Moore, the co-chairman of the Graham evangelistic event that came to Philadelphia in 1992, said Shea has long been an institution at Graham’s crusades.

“George Beverly Shea is really just a delightful Christian man and a fixture in the Graham crusades,” said Moore, pastor of Tenth Memorial Baptist Church in Philadelphia, in an interview.

“He was, with his music, with his commitment that really came through his music, … the flavoring of the crusade.”

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