Singing on the Mountain Bids Farewell to Grandfather Mountain By Tom McAuliffe
It began in 1924 when Linville’s Joseph Larkin Hartley, Sr., first called the faithful to MacRae Meadows on the fourth Sunday of June. Gospel music, prayer, and fellowship marked Singing on the Mountain on the revered grounds of Grandfather. On Sunday, June 26, 2022, the ‘altar call’ to the rocky crags of the iconic mountain mark the end of the annual tradition after 96 years. Speaking on behalf of the event’s directors, Kenny Hartley, grandson of the founding father of Singing on the Mountain, announced what he called a difficult decision. “This final event will be a simple celebration of Grandaddy and his legacy.” The following account first appeared in Carolina Mountain Life Magazine in the spring of 2018, a year after the death of Reverend Billy Graham, whose 1962 appearance on the mountain epitomized the event’s impact on the High Country. Billy Graham passed away in February 2017 at the age of 99. Singing on the Mountain will end its earthly run after 96 years. The final altar call begins at 10 a.m. on June 26 at MacRae Meadows on Grandfather Mountain.
Singing on the Mountain…”Nearer, My God, to Thee” It was an old-time revival and picnic—a tent meeting held beneath a Blue Ridge Sky. Author Heidi Coryell Williams described the event as a place ‘where spirit-led people from North Carolina and well beyond have come to be ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’—with plenty of sweet tea.” Legend recalls when Little Betty Johnson of the Johnson Family Singers led the crowd in a stirring sing-along that could be heard over a mile away on Grandfather Mountain’s Mile High Swinging Bridge. “What a glorious place to praise the Lord,” Grand Ole Opry legend and frequent pilgrim Roy Acuff would say. “It is like being lifted right up there with your prayers.” By the 1950s, crowds in excess of 25,000 were common for the one-day gospel singing on Grandfather. Storied performers joined Acuff in the likes of Johnny Cash and June and Maybelle Carter, Arthur Smith and the Crackerjacks, and Oral Roberts; even Bob Hope spoke to the multitudes gathered on Grandfather Mountain. But perhaps it was in 1962 at the 38th Edition of Singing on the Mountain that the event took its rightful place in mountain lore. That year the Reverend Billy Graham struck a mighty chord in the faithful who made their annual pilgrimage to Singing on the Mountain. A crowd estimated between one and two hundred thousand packed all roads leading to Grandfather to hear the world’s most charismatic and powerful Christian evangelist. Ominous thunder heads formed over the mountain that morning as folks in their Sunday best clamored over the meadow and filled the rocky grottos, roads and pathways to witness Rev. Graham. No one there will forget how the clouds parted as Rev. Graham stepped up to the microphone and the sun shone brightly, a truth recorded in 90-year-old Joe Lee Hartley’s diary. Rev. Graham spoke: “Many people here today have hungry hearts, you have problems that need solving and you have sins that need forgiving. You have burdens that need lifting. You have a need in your life and you’ve come up on the side of this great and historic mountain hoping that somehow today you might find help in your life and find the beginning of a new life. Well, I tell you that before you leave Grandfather Mountain this day your life can be changed. You can be a new person and start a new dimension of living in an entirely new direction.” It was one of the largest mass of people ever assembled to hear the evangelist speak. “This must be among one of the largest crowds ever to gather in Western North Carolina,” he intoned. “People are in the bushes, in the trees, in the shadows of campfires in what must be the most picturesque setting I’ve ever seen. Is there a more beautiful spot in all the world than Western North Carolina?” So large was the crowd, Rev. Graham acknowledged early that a traditional ‘altar call’ would be impossible given the mass of humanity assembled that day. Instead, he called for a show of hands from those accepting their Savior that day. Rev. Graham invoked the words of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to punctuate his stirring mountaintop sermon. “Mountains are great Apostles of nature, whose sermons are avalanches and whose voice is one crying in the wilderness.” CAROLINA MOUNTAIN LIFE Spring 2022 —
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