Billy Graham, perhaps the world’s most renowned evangelist, was buried in a simple pine plywood casket made by inmates at the Louisiana state prison known as Angola. Caskets were built for both Ruth and Billy Graham in 2006.
Angola is not in the casket-making business, but there is a small woodworking shop inside the prison where the coffins are built for Angola’s inmates, most of whom spend the rest of their lives incarcerated in the largest prison in the nation.
Franklin Graham was visiting Angola in 2005 for the prison’s annual rodeo when he watched master carpenter Richard Lee “Grasshopper” Liggett at work on a casket in the woodworking shop. The Graham family had donated more than $200,000 to the prison for ministry and chapel construction, and Graham became interested in the work God was doing behind the prison’s walls.
The Tudy Chapel at Angola.
Graham asked warden Burl Cain if the carpenters could make two caskets for his parents. Cain offered to build the caskets out of better-quality wood, but Graham insisted on pine, with an added request: that the carpenters burn their names into the wood.
The names of three men were burned into the outside of his father’s casket. The inscription was simple: “Handcrafted by Richard Liggett, Paul Krolowitz, Clifford Bowman.” All three are now deceased. Liggett’s brother said it was probably through Billy Graham that his brother became a Christian.
Bowman died in 2009 while serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. He was enrolled in the Bible College of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, which operates inside the prison, from 2002-2004. (In an interesting twist, Bowman served a life sentence for killing his father-in-law, who was a building contractor. Bowman, who worked for his father-in-law, was a carpenter.)
More than 278 men have graduated from the New Orleans Bible College at Angola, and 35 graduates have been transferred to other prisons to serve as missionaries. Currently, more than 100 men are enrolled in the Bible College.
There are 2,300 of the 6,200 inmates at Angola who attend 32 churches located in the six “camps” within the 18,000 acres owned by Angola. The pastor of each church is an inmate at the prison.
Prison inmates affixed a wooden cross to Graham’s casket.
Seventy-five percent or more of the inmates will die while at Angola. The prison has developed two cemeteries and conducts funeral services, complete with Angola Bible College-trained pastors and a horse-drawn carriage. Inside the carriage, an inmate’s body lies in a casket built by his fellow inmates — one much like the casket of Billy Graham.
The impact New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary has had on Angola prison is unparalleled. Once known as the bloodiest prison in the nation, violence is now the exception rather than the norm. A 2015 graduate of the Bible College, William Hall, spoke on behalf of the class of 2015. “Warden Cain did something very few men are able to do,” Hall said. “He let God in. Isn’t it amazing what happens when Jesus comes in?”
Clifford Ray Bowman was one of those inmates who was touched by the grace of God and enrolled in the Bible College. Then, in 2006, he helped build Billy Graham’s casket.