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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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