Billy Sunday often told audiences that his life had not begun in comfort or advantage. Long before he stood before great crowds in revival tabernacles, he had known poverty, loss, and uncertainty. One story he occasionally shared reached back to the earliest days of his childhood.
“My father enlisted four months before I was born,” Sunday recalled. “He went to the front with his Company of Twenty-third Iowa Infantry, but he never came back.” The elder Sunday died during the Civil War and was buried at Camp Patterson, Missouri. The evangelist never saw him.
The war left Billy’s mother alone with two small boys to raise, and life on the Iowa frontier was hard. “I have battled my way since I was six years old,” Sunday said years later. “I know all about the dark and seamy side of life. If ever a man fought hard every inch of his way, I have.”
Eventually the strain became too great. One day his mother gathered Billy and his brother Ed and told them quietly what must happen.
“Boys,” she said, “I am going to send you to the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home at Glenwood, Iowa.”
The boys would have to travel there by train. The night before their departure Billy noticed something unusual about his mother. “I looked into mother’s face. Her eyes were red and her hair was disheveled.” Only later did he understand why. “All the time Ed and I slept, mother had been praying.”
When the moment came to leave, the goodbye was heartbreaking. “Mother put one arm about me and the other about Ed and sobbed as if her heart would break.” Passersby noticed the scene but did not understand its meaning. “People walked by and looked at us,” Sunday remembered, “but they didn’t say a word. They didn’t know, and if they had they wouldn’t have cared. Mother knew; she knew that for years she wouldn’t see her boys.”
The train pulled away and the boys cried out, “Good-by, mother!”
Their journey was not easy. When they reached Council Bluffs it was cold, and the boys had little money and thin coats. They turned their collars up against the wind and wandered about the town. Finally they went into a small hotel and asked a woman for something to eat.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“My name is Willie Sunday and this is my brother Ed,” he answered.
“Where are you going?”
“Going to the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home at Glenwood.”
The woman wiped her eyes when she heard their story. “My husband was a soldier and he never came back,” she said softly. “He wouldn’t turn anyone away, and I certainly won’t turn you boys away.” She took them in and fed them both breakfast and dinner.
But the hardest part of the journey still remained. The boys had no money for the train that would take them the last miles to Glenwood. When they saw a freight train standing on the tracks, they climbed into the caboose and hoped for the best.
Soon the conductor appeared.
“Where’s your money?” he asked.
“Ain’t got any.”
“Where’s your tickets?”
“Ain’t got any.”
“You can’t ride without money or tickets,” the man said. “I’ll have to put you off.”
The boys began to cry. Ed handed the conductor a letter addressed to the superintendent of the soldiers’ orphans’ home. The man read it slowly. When he finished, he gave the letter back. Tears were running down his cheeks.
“Just sit still, boys,” he said gently. “It won’t cost you a cent to ride on my train.”
A short time later, as the train rounded a curve in the Iowa countryside, the conductor pointed toward a hill in the distance.
“There is the home on the hill.”
For Billy Sunday, the journey to the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home marked the beginning of a difficult but formative chapter in his life. Years later, when he stood before vast revival crowds, he sometimes told this story—not simply to recount his past, but to remind listeners that even in the hardest moments, kindness and providence could appear in unexpected places.
Adapted from: March 13, 1916 (8). The Baltimore Sun.
Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935) 