The children at the elementary school next door can be heard, easily, from Leighton Ford’s backyard.

Their squeals of delight rise over the brick wall on a cool May morning in the SouthPark area of Charlotte, drifting across a newly laid bark-nugget path and through the branches of a sprawling Japanese maple tree.

Somewhere nearby, a leaf blower hums. Birds chatter overhead.

In the middle of it all sits Ford — the 94-year-old evangelist, author and mentor to younger Christian leaders — beneath the tree, a walking stick resting nearby as he quietly surveys the small garden he created for his late wife.

Not long ago, this corner of his property was empty, mostly dirt and patchy grass, a space nobody used very much. But after his wife Jean died from a stroke in February 2024, and two cancer diagnoses of his own in the months that followed, Ford began imagining something different in that spot.

A place for reflection.

A place for prayer.

A place to sit quietly and think.

A few days earlier, five teenage boys and several fathers from a church group spent hours hauling in more than two tons of stone and bags of mulch to help finish the space. The fresh path now curves gently through the shaded backyard. A small birdbath sits near flowering plants. The sounds of the playing children give the space an unexpected buoyancy.

He calls it “Jeanie’s Place,” and he smiles when he says the name.

Because while the garden exists as a result of grief, it does not feel grief-stricken. It feels alive.

Ford laughs frequently throughout the morning. He constantly asks questions of his guests. He jokes with his children, Kevin and Debbie, who sit nearby. Then, mid-conversation, a woodpecker lands high in a nearby tree and knocks loudly enough to interrupt him, prompting Ford to smile again.

“All right, God,” he says. “We’ll take that as a manifestation today that you’re here.”

Even now, in the middle of uncertainty, he seems intensely engaged with the world around him.

‘Finding the time to stop and look’

The longtime Charlotte minister and author is widely known both for his own ministry work and for his close relationship with Jean’s older brother, evangelist Billy Graham.

The Fords married in 1953 and left Charlotte for England two years later to work with Graham’s ministry, beginning a partnership and life together that would last seven decades. Over time, Leighton became an influential evangelical leader in his own right — preaching internationally and eventually founding Leighton Ford Ministries in Charlotte.

But sitting in his backyard on this morning, Ford shows little interest in recounting the milestones of his career.

Instead, he keeps returning to another subject entirely: attentiveness.

To paying attention to people. To learning how to receive help. To resisting the temptation to move too quickly through life, and instead slowing down enough to notice bluebirds.

“I think the mistake is feeling, I have to stay busy, busy, busy,” Ford says. “I think that’s all of our mistakes (is not) finding the time to stop and look … and see what’s there.”

Ford is currently undergoing immunotherapy treatment for anaplastic thyroid cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease; five years ago, the diagnosis often carried only months-long survival expectations. But Ford’s doctors are using a newer treatment approach — tied to research out of MD Anderson Cancer Center and administered through doctors connected to UNC Health — that has seen success, with some patients who are currently cancer free after more than two years.

And while fatigue associated with his medicine can at times overwhelm him, “This morning,” he says, early in the conversation, “I’m doing fine.”

For Ford, though, the physical realities of aging and illness seem intertwined with learning how to inhabit a life that no longer includes the person who shared it with him for more than 70 years.

“You don’t get over that, obviously,” he says. “You never get over that.”

Amid cancer, an attempt to age gracefully

Early on, before Ford carved out “Jeanie’s Place,” he had a spot in the back of the backyard that he came to consider his “Wailing Wall.”

Many times, he’d come home to an empty house, or he’d miss her terribly on a Saturday night, and find himself out there by himself letting the emotions pour out of him.

He also started doing for her what he did for their 21-year-old son Sandy after he died in 1981 during open-heart surgery. He wrote down memories that would eventually turn into a book, “as a way of dealing with my grief,” he says, “and also sharing her with others.”

Then came the diagnoses themselves — bladder cancer discovered just six weeks after her death, thyroid cancer last year. The illnesses sharpened something he had already been slowly learning as he moved deeper into his 90s: He could dwell on the past and fret about the future, or try to live as fully as possible in the present.

So Leighton began hosting Saturday-night dinner parties to help take his mind off how much he misses Jean.

And in general, he started inviting a variety of people to come over regularly. Ford says he has learned to prioritize remaining deeply connected to other people while also trying not to deny the realities of aging.

“I have to be realistic about it,” he says. “I might live a year, I might live five years. I don’t know. I hope it’s longer and fuller. But I told someone the other day, it’s like when we went on a family vacation, for a week, in the mountains. We loved it, and by the time Friday comes, you’re saying, ‘Oh, our vacation is almost over.’ I mean, I was literally thinking about this last week:

“Then … well, let’s just pretend we still have a great weekend (left to spend) together.”

When his dad finishes that statement, Kevin recalls a conversation the family was having at his house last Thanksgiving:

They were sitting on the couch, talking about his now-100-year-old father-in-law, and his wife said she thought he was ready to be reunited in heaven with his late wife. At that, Debbie’s daughter Christine turned to her grandfather, Leighton, and asked: “Are you ready?” To which Leighton Ford responded, “No, I’m not. I still have a sense of purpose and mission.”

“I’ll never forget that,” Kevin says.

And that sense of mission is still shaping his dad’s days.

In addition to continuing to mentor younger leaders around the world through the ministry his son Kevin now leads, late last year, Leighton Ford published his short book about his wife titled “Like a Gentle River: The Life and Witness of Jean Ford.” He is now working on a few other writing projects, including a book of poetry and a collection of stories about his life for his grandchildren.

Also, the world still seems to interest him. Deeply.

Maintaining hope — ‘with great difficulty’

He also speaks openly about discouragement over political division, distrust, isolation and the broader anxieties shaping American life. But he still feels hopeful.

“Very much — though with great difficulty,” Ford says. “Because we see all the signs of what’s happening, and especially in this country, that are so discouraging, politically and otherwise.”

He goes silent for several seconds, as the wind kicks up and a hanging chime in the garden tinkles loudly.

Then he continues: “Just in my own life, I’ve been at points of discouragement and where I was ready to quit, and not only physically, but emotionally, spiritually. Almost every time, not always easily, I have been able, for God’s grace, to come through them and try to be a whole person. So I feel that my own life. ...

“But a friend of mine once said ... ‘When the light seems to go, you don’t chase the light. Sometimes you have to go into the darkness in order to come through.’”

The chiming continues. Children can be heard squealing again in the schoolyard.

Not long ago, this place was empty.

Now it has become something else entirely: a space shaped by grief, uncertainty, beauty and hope all at once.

“I think, sometimes, there are empty places in our hearts and our lives that we ignore,” Ford says, “that God wants to fill in various ways. So I feel that.

“I feel at peace here.”

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