Rex Humbard

Alpha Rex Emmanuel Humbard (August 13, 1919 – September 21, 2007) was an American television evangelist whose Cathedral of Tomorrow show was aired on over 600 stations at the peak of its popularity.

Life and career Humbard was born on August 13, 1919, in Little Rock, Arkansas, to Pentecostal evangelists. He began attending church revivals all across the country and was raised in the church, while withstanding the order from his father in learning how to play guitar while in church. Humbard was also the first evangelist to have a weekly nationwide television program in the United States, running from 1952 to 1983, although his first television broadcast was in 1949.

Humbard's $4 million Cathedral of Tomorrow church in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, a suburb of Akron, was built in 1958 specifically to accommodate television equipment, crew and chorus. It can seat 5,400 people.

Humbard's television programs featured gospel music such as the popular Cathedral Quartet. His wife, Maude Aimee, and his children were also often featured on the programs.

His ministry eventually extended to Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Far East, Australia, Latin America and Africa, giving it a worldwide reach of 20 million viewers, greater than any of his contemporaries by the late 1970s.

In the 1960s, Humbard's ministry started to purchase businesses through a for-profit arm to raise money. Over time they owned a girdle factory in Brooklyn, an office tower in Akron, a college on Mackinac Island, an advertising agency, an apartment building, and other assets.

Humbard's ministry ran into financial problems in the early 1970s. Starting in 1959, the ministry had sold bonds and promissory notes through its own team of salesmen. The securities were not registered and came under the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Officials in at least six states halted the sale of the securities. Humbard said that the SEC did not allow him to count expected bequests from wills as assets, that the ministry never missed an interest payment, and that the investors were not worried about losing their money. In the end, he was forced to sell off nearly all of the ministry's assets and cut off the overseas operations.

Humbard's son Rex, Jr. succeeded his father in the ministry after the family moved to Florida in 1982. Humbard's television ministry promoted an independent Christian television station in Canton, Ohio, WDLI (Channel 17), which later was purchased by the Trinity Broadcasting Network as its Cleveland-area station. Another son, Charles, heads the UP television network.

The rest of Humbard's Cathedral of Tomorrow complex was sold in 1984 to television evangelist Ernest Angley, while a new channel 55 allocation was acquired by Angley's Winston Broadcasting Network division for the current Akron-licensed and Cuyahoga Falls-based former CW affiliate, WBNX-TV.

After retiring to Lantana, Florida, in the 1980s with his wife, Maude Aimee (whom he married in 1942), He was inducted into the Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1993 by Ohio Governor George Voinovich, after having been inducted into the National Religious Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1991. Humbard was termed one of the "Top 25 Principal Architects of the American Century" by U.S. News & World Report on December 27, 1999. He was survived by his wife, Maude Aimee (who died in 2012), and four children. He is buried at Rose Hill Burial Park in Fairlawn, Ohio.