DeathsMELVIN GRAHAM, 78, younger brother of international evangelist Billy Graham, died August 24 after a heart attack. Melvin Graham was a lay evangelist, dairy farmer, and developer.
• PAUL HILL, convicted of the 1994 murders of a doctor and a volunteer escort at a Pensacola, Florida, abortion clinic, was executed in Florida on September 3 by lethal injection. Hill, 49, did not file an appeal. Prolife leaders unanimously repudiated Hill's violence. "Paul Hill did our cause no favors," Joseph Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League told The Christian Science Monitor. "You don't kill abortionists. You try to convert them peacefully."
• WILBUR E. NELSON, 92, who in 1944 founded a nationally syndicated radio ministry, The Morning Chapel Hour, died August 22 in Laguna Woods, California, after five weeks of hospitalization for a variety of ailments. The ministry, now called Compassion Radio, continues under the leadership of his son, Norman Nelson.
J. RAYMOND KNIGHTON JR., founder of MAP (formerly Medical Assistance Project) International, died on September 3 of congestive heart failure. Knighton was 81. MAP, based in Brunswick, Georgia, annually provides about $150 million in medicines and medical supplies to hospitals, clinics, and refugee centers around the world.
• KENNETH B. MULHOLLAND, longtime missions professor at Columbia International University and former missionary to Central America under the United Church Board for World Ministries, died September 8. Mulholland, 65, had battled cancer for the last two years.
• Controversial church founder and author Kenneth E. Hagin, 86, died September 19. A former Assemblies of God healing evangelist, Hagin founded the Word of Faith movement. Critics said Hagin emphasized an unbiblical ...