Cathedral Cruiser
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Oral Roberts Ministries 

    When GM decommissioned the Parade of Progress, 12 Futurliners went up for sale. We know that a couple of them found their way to the Michigan State Police and were used as traveling exhibits for fairground displays. We also found out that at least one Futurliner found its way into the hands of the popular Oral Roberts crusade of the sixties.
    Parader Jim Tolley recalls, "... I was on duty when Oral Roberts visited the site in Tulsa one evening. I showed him around. He was interested mostly in the tent; he had never seen one like it before, and tents were a part of his evangelical tours at the time. He told me he was leaving for Australia the next day, so I gave him John Ryan's (Parade Director) number in Detroit. I never heard from him or saw him again and did not know that he had purchased a Futurliner."
    Futurliner volunteer, Howard Sullivan, paid a visit to the Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma the end of February, 2004 while visiting relatives in the area. He inquired at the library as to the validity of the story that Oral Roberts had used a Futurliner in his crusades. At first, he drew blanks but persistence paid off as he kept asking various people at the university. He hit pay dirt when he researched the Abundant Life publication published by Oral Roberts during that time-period. Having obtained copies of the articles, Howard met Don Maynard who found photos and negatives of the Futurliner. Don put the pictures on a disk and gave them to Howard.

    Oral Roberts renamed the Futurliner the Cathedral Cruiser and converted it into a multipurpose vehicle that served as a bus, presentation stage, living quarters and truck. The articles that were given to us from the archives of the Oral Roberts University Library in Tulsa, Oklahoma, thanks to the visit of Futurliner volunteer Howard Sullivan, describe the Cathedral Cruiser as being used in places such as Mexico, Central, South America and in the southwest United States. In the 1960's, The Cathedral Cruiser was unlike anything that the people south of the boarder had ever seen. The combination of this unusual vehicle, with all of it's unique features and the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, were very effective and drew large crowds.
    It was also made mention in one of the articles that, "Future plans include other teams and other cruisers to span the globe and saturate the world with the message of abundant life." We have no conformation that that vision ever came to pass.  

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