Huge Auction Stills The Voice Of Once Largest Radio Church
- By Michael Stillman
The library at Ambassador College, courtesy of National Book Auctions' website
By Michael Stillman
The voice was riveting. In the days of my youth, it flowed along the airwaves like molasses, seeping into every corner of America and much of the world. This was the 1950s and 1960s. A.M. radio still ruled the air. When you lived out in the country in this era, your local stations were forced to go off the air at dusk. All you could listen to were powerful distant stations, their crackling voices penetrating small town America from afar. The reception was rarely clear, but the choice was this or silence.
Like most of my age, I tuned in to hear the sounds of rock and roll, that vulgar new music that was corrupting the souls of my generation. Six nights a week, I would tune to hear those raucous sounds the local stations would not touch. But on Sunday night, Chuck Berry and Bill Haley fell silent on even distant stations. That is when the smooth yet commanding voice of Garner Ted Armstrong would take over. I lived in the Northeast, not the South, not the Bible belt. Radio preachers did not often penetrate our airspace. However, Garner Ted was so powerful, so popular, that he could travel where not even Billy Graham dared go. In his heyday, Armstrong pulled in audiences and contributions well beyond those of his famed counterpart. He was that good.
Whatever became of Garner Ted Armstrong, his father Herbert W. Armstrong, their Worldwide Church of God, The World Tomorrow radio and television programs, The Plain Truth Magazine, and Ambassador College is only tangentially related to the subject of this article. The main topic is an enormous book auction that began late last month and will continue each weekend through November as the 100,000-volume library of Ambassador College in Big Sandy, Texas, is dispersed. The library was built to accommodate the university's successful application for accreditation in 1994. However, by 1997, funding shortages forced the college to close its doors, and the library has remained unused ever since. National Book Auctions, the national arm of CNY Book Auctions of Ithaca, New York, will conduct the sale. They estimate around 10,000 books, combined in 800 lots, will be sold each weekend, with sales being made at the site, online, and through eBay.
The rise and downfall of the Worldwide Church of God has been told in other venues, and I will not try to tell it again in any great detail. I am struck more by my own memories of the spellbinding speaking style of Garner Ted, heard so many years ago, than by the scandals that brought the empire down. My recollections of Garner Ted are that, compared to most radio and television evangelists, he didn't have all that much to say, but he said it better than anyone else. It was like cotton candy. Still, it was hard not to listen because he said little so very well.
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Huge Auction Stills The Voice Of Once Largest Radio Church
- By Michael Stillman
A youthful Garner Ted, with mother Loma and father Herbert W. Armstrong.
Perhaps the issue was that the doctrines of the Worldwide Church of God were a little strange. They were a combination of standard Christianity, a large dash of Old Testament Judaism, some atypical views on certain Christian doctrines, and some very bizarre prophecies. The most notable of these was that the world would be destroyed after a third world war, one started by a unified Europe under the command of a new Hitler. It was supposed to start around 1972, and one of the lessons to be learned from this, like the end-of-the-world prophesies for the year 2,000, is that when you prophesy, don't specify a date. The prophecies were those of Ted's father, church founder Herbert W. Armstrong. One has the suspicion that if Ted had focused too much on the unique doctrines of his father, they probably would have scared away much of the audience. The result was that he seemed to focus more on how he said it rather than what he said. It sounded impressive even if you couldn't quite grasp his point. It has been said he developed his speaking style from news commentator Paul Harvey, another commanding speaker who ultimately doesn't seem to say very much.
Herbert W. began his broadcast ministry in 1935, when Ted was just five. He was undoubtedly a good speaker, but the ministry would not take off until Ted was made its spokesperson in the mid-1950s. The son was on another plain. The ministry would grow through the next two decades, generating the cash to build three branches of Ambassador College, a popular auditorium in Pasadena, California (Ambassador Auditorium), finance filmmaking, including Tatum O'Neil's Paper Moon, produce a widely-read free newspaper, The Plain Truth, and provide for a pleasant lifestyle for various officers. It would also build the library about to be auctioned. Garner Ted would spread from radio to television, and while I never felt he translated as well to the new medium, he did have movie star looks to go with his radio star voice.
Success corrupts. With wealth and power come opportunities that are hard for anyone, even a preacher man, to resist. In 1972, Herbert W. kicked his son off the air, announcing that he was "in the bonds of Satan." Actually, he was more likely in the bonds of women. Ted apparently had a fondness for the coeds at Ambassador College, among others, and some gambling problems. The move was a disaster. Herbert W., now almost 80-years-old, was no match for his son on the radio. He was forced to bring Ted back for a reprise to keep the contributions flowing.
Not that Herbert W. was free from scandal either. Several of his lieutenants would later resign, amid claims of financial improprieties, recurring rumors of incest at an earlier time, and his remarriage, after his first wife's death, to a woman 50 years his junior. That would eventually end in a messy divorce. However, in 1972, father was still trying to balance his son's soul and his own checkbook, but this was not to be. In 1978, the 85-year-old father once and for all kicked his son out of the ministry. He could do so, for while the son brought in the money, the father controlled the empire.
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Huge Auction Stills The Voice Of Once Largest Radio Church
- By Michael Stillman
Garner Ted (left) and Herbert W. Armstrong later in life.
Herbert W's eviction of his son could be looked on as a murder-suicide. While Herbert W. managed along until his death in 1986 at the age of ninety-three, he had no real successor. With Garner Ted gone, the bland heirs to the Worldwide Church of God could not hold the faithful nor generate the tithes. Almost all of the property is now gone, with another chunk set to depart in this auction. The church which once commanded the Sunday night airwaves is but a shell of itself, an obscure, forgotten remnant of another era. The official Worldwide Church of God is essentially mainstream today anyway, having rejected most of Herbert's teachings. Those who still follow him broke off into a host of new even smaller splinter groups. Herbert W's hope for a legacy died when he kicked his son out the door.
Garner Ted fared even more poorly. Without the powerful church behind him, he was forced to start over with a new ministry of his own. He still had his voice, just as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart had theirs, but the smell of scandal prevented his ever rising to the pinnacle again. To top that off, Garner Ted would later be thrown out of his own church for the same cause, too much interest in women to whom he was not married. He would have to start yet another new church, smaller still. He continued to lead this church in Tyler, Texas, ironically just a stone's throw from Big Sandy and Ambassador College, until his death in 2003 at the age of just 73. His obituary was barely a footnote, even in the Texas papers, so far had he fallen. However, his last ministry is still carried on by a son, an even smaller remnant than the tiny remains of his father's once great church.
The first two Friday and Saturday auction sessions took place in September, but the great majority of the sales are still to come. The sessions will be held Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. National Book Auctions reports that the Ambassador College Library used Library of Congress classifications, and they will move through the library by categorization over the coming weeks. They state that there are a large number of "antique books including many landmark texts of significant value." Books will be sold in box lots, small groups, and individually. They have been posting the lots offered on their website, including thorough descriptions and photographs of the books. Someone has gone to a lot of effort to make such detailed information available on such a large collection.
Big Sandy is located in East Texas, near Tyler, roughly 100 miles from Dallas. It is oppressively hot in the summer, but fall is a fantastic time to visit the area. If you are interested in books, history, auctions, or travel, you have an excuse to go. However, if you can't make it, NBA has also provided for offsite bidding. The website address is nationalbookauctions.com, telephone number 607-269-0101. The online catalogue of listings can be found at http://nationalbookauctions.com/alertauctions.htm.
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