Unrelated to my book:
Millard Fuller is coming to Toledo Oct. 19 and 20, and I interviewed him by phone yesterday. He is the founder of Habitat for Humanity, which has built 200,000 homes for low-income families around the world. Mr. Fuller, 71, was kicked out of Habitat last year after what appears to be baseless allegations from the executive board, when in actuality it was over a difference in philosophies over how to run the agency. That's all old news, basically, and not what I want to get into here. What I want to say is that I am amazed he is coming to Toledo to raise funds for the local chapter of Habitat, despite the way he was treated. He quoted an African saying: "When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled." He didn't want the local Habitat affiliates to suffer because of this controversy. What an exemplary attitude. We can all learn to be more forgiving and less self-centered.
Anyone whoh knows Fuller's amazing life story should not be surprised by the way he handled the situation.While attending the University of Alabama Law School, he and a friend started a direct-mail marketing company and Fuller became a millionaire by age 29. But he was miserable and suffered stress-related health problems. His wife left him. The two reconciled and agreed to sell everything they owned and serve in Christian ministry.
They joined a local northwest Georgia pastor, Clarence Jordan, in building a home for a poor Georgia family. But Rev. Jordan died of a massive heart attack, at age 57, and never saw the home completed. Mr. Fuller and his wife took up the cause, which eventually led to their founding of Habitat in 1976.
After being fired by his own board last year, he started a new nonprofit agency in June 2005 called the Fuller Center for Housing. The global need for suitable housing is so great, he said, that at the present rate of building homes for the poor, it would take 7,500 years to meet the current demand. So rather than "competing" with Habitat, the Fuller Center is joining in the effort, against all odds, to help poor families in the USA and around the world move into decent homes.
I didn't have room in The Blade to share this, but I asked Mr. Fuller for an anecdote about former President Jimmy Carter, one of the most visible supporters of Habitat. In 1984, Fuller and Carter took a bus trip with other volunteers to New York to renovate an apartment in the Lower East Side, near Hell's Kitchen. The pastor of Metro Baptist Church welcomed everyone and said their church is poor and the only accommodations they could arrange for the Habitat volunteers were bunk beds, with men on one floor and women on another. However, he told the crowd, they had one apartment, which they were calling the Presidential Suite, set aside for President and Rosalynn Carter. Jimmy got up and said thanks, but he and Rosalynn have been married for 40 years and love each other dearly but will be fine sleeping in bunk beds on separate floors. What you don't know, Mr. Pastor, is that there is a newlywed couple on this trip, Carter told him. Let them have the "Presidential Suite" apartment.
By the way, Mr. Fuller said Jimmy Carter is his Sunday School teacher, and he taught the class last week and the week before.

Oct. 13, 2006. Toledo, Ohio.