Millard Fuller Interview (page: 3 / 9) Founder, Habitat for Humanity International	Print Interview

We'd like to hear about our own early years. What were your lives like when you were children? Linda, will you start?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Linda Fuller: I grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and that's a university town. We lived on the outskirts, in a little place called Alberta City, and we had just sort of a typical life, except for the fact that my father and my mother owned an electrical appliance store right in downtown Tuscaloosa. And I can always remember, when it was time for inventory, they had me down there counting nuts and bolts and things like that. We just had sort of a typical middle-class family life. My mother made a lot of clothes for my sister and me, and was a wonderful homemaker, as well as being support for my dad working in the store. So it was pretty calm. I mean, we went to Florida maybe one week out of the year, a family vacation, and I walked to school. Just kind of a typical upbringing.

Millard, you were the oldest child in your family, is that right?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: I was actually an only child. My mother died suddenly at age 27, and I was three years old. And if my mother had lived, I would have had a sister. She was pregnant with a little girl, and she died, was sick in the afternoon, dead by midnight. It was a devastating thing for my father, and it took him a long time to get over it. I went and lived with an aunt for a while until he recovered, because her death was totally unexpected, and my dad was very much in love with my mother. It was just a very devastating thing for him, but he eventually recovered. And then the year I was six years old, he remarried, and then he and his second wife had two sons. So I had two stepbrothers, and they are ten and 12 years younger than me, so in a lot of ways, it was like another family. But I grew up at the edge of a small cotton mill town. My father, at an earlier time in his life, had been what is called a second hand, which is a leadership role in the dye works, where they dyed the cotton fabrics. But then he bought a store, some time after my mother's death. He bought a little country grocery store at the edge of town, and so I grew up in a grocery store, stocking shelves and taking orders and had a bicycle and had a route. And then my father bought a 400-acre farm a few miles out of town, and my dad and I went in the cattle business together. One of my fond memories as a child was going to the cattle sales and bidding on cattle and raising them, and I was very much in business, even as a youngster. When I was six years old, I bought a pig, and I fattened him up and sold him at market. And then I got into buying chickens and then got into buying hundreds of rabbits, and was engaged in other business enterprises as a teenager.

You say your mother's death was devastating for your father. What about for you?

Millard Fuller: Well, I was just three years old, and of course I was very aware of my mother's death, but I remembered that I was always loved and cared for. So it was not a devastating situation for me at that point. When my dad remarried, he married a wonderful woman, but I never got along with her. We didn't, which is not untypical in stepchildren. I was six years old when he married, and we just never made it together. We conflicted. We clashed on a continuing basis.

So how did you deal with that?

Millard Fuller: Maybe in some ways not so good. It was just open warfare until I left home at age 18.

Were you close to the half-brothers?

Millard Fuller: Later on, we became close, especially the younger one. He came and lived with Linda and me. By that time, I had gotten out of school and we were living in Montgomery, Alabama. I was practicing law and I was in business. He was a very bright youngster, so we invited him to come and live with us for his last two years so he could go to a better high school. So he became like a son to us, and I feel close to both of my brothers, my half-brothers, but this youngest one, we are very close to him.

What about you, Linda? Do you get along with your sibling?

Linda Fuller: Very well now. When we were at home growing up, we had pillow fights, book fights. We were so different, but it's amazing how much alike we are.

Do you think those experiences of early childhood had an impact on your later life?

Linda Fuller: I know my relationship with my sister had a big impact on me, because my sister was a bookworm, and I was sort of the tomboy type. I wanted to be outside playing ball. I didn't care anything about reading. She read all the time. And there was all this big thing about, "Oh, my sister is so smart," so I concluded that I must be dumb, I must be stupid. So I had this inferiority complex to deal with in my adulthood, but I think it's made me stronger, because I had to kind of fight for my own self-esteem, and it's been quite a journey. I'm still on it really.

What about you, Millard?

Millard Fuller: I think one of the things that I came out of this childhood with -- with a lot of conflict -- was a great desire to have my own family be a harmonious family. I wanted to have a loving wife and children where there would be harmony in the home. And with some exceptions, relatively minor exceptions, that's what we've had. We feel very blessed with our four children. We have excellent relations with all of them. We love them and they love us, and they're all well-established and stable young people. That part of my dream has been realized.

Linda Fuller: It's made a big demand on me though, because any time there is any conflict, "Oh, that's just like my stepmother," you know. It's made it harder on me, I think.

What do you do? What's your response?

Linda Fuller: I say, "That was 30 years ago. This is now, and I'm me and I'm not your stepmother."

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