William Franklin Graham, Jr., was born on November 7, 1918, on a dairy farm near Charlotte, North Carolina. His parents, zealous members of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, enjoyed a reasonable standard of living and avoided many of the social and economic ills associated with the 1930s and the Great Depression. Graham’s upbringing revolved around discipline, labor, and scriptural teachings. He graduated from Sharon High School in May 1936 and attended Bob Jones College, in Tennessee, and the Florida Bible Institute. It was at Wheaton College, in Illinois, in the early 1940s that Graham began to fulfill his religious calling and developed his unique style of lecturing, teaching, and preaching. Founded in 1860 by Wesleyan Methodists, Wheaton College established itself during and after Graham’s student days as a robust center of neo-evangelicalism. Graham studied anthropology at Wheaton, graduating in 1943.