Millard Fuller Interview (page: 4 / 9) Founder, Habitat for Humanity International	Print Interview

Millard, you mentioned that your father bought farmland, that you were raising animals and were intrigued with business. But when you were ten, your father did something in housing that had an impact on you, didn't he?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: My father had this farm, and there were some tenant farmers living on the land in very poor housing. And my dad decided to renovate those houses, and I participated in that. I helped to fix those houses up, and I remember it. As a young person that was very meaningful to me. I could see how happy those people were to get a good house, to get out of bad living conditions and get into a decent place to live, and over the years, I've just -- it's a very vivid memory to me. Of course, one of the exciting things was that we had to make a well for them, which included digging the hole in the ground, and going down with dynamite, and bringing the wires up, and attaching them to the battery of the automobile, and making a big explosion and then going back down in the hole and getting the rocks up. It was exciting.

It sounds like a ten-year-old's dream.

Millard Fuller: Right.

But the idea that your father would give back to the community in that way, is that indicative of the value system in your family?

Millard Fuller: Well, my father and I were very close, after my mother's death especially. I was a part of my mother, whom he loved so dearly, and in fact, I think I was part of the problem with the conflict with his second wife, because he always showered love on me, and I think even though my stepmother was a very stoic person, she would never express her disappointment or anything. I could tell it was hurting her, because sometimes at the meal table, he would sit there and get dreamy-eyed and talk about my mother in her presence, which didn't exactly make things nicer. But my father and I were just always very close. He was a loving man. He was always very active in the church, and he was a dedicated Christian man. He was concerned about the community.

Linda Fuller: He was active in the Boy Scouts.

Millard Fuller: He was active in the Boy Scouts. He was a leader in the Boy Scouts, and he just was an encourager. He was an encourager always to me. He was a man that had a big heart, and that made an impact on me.

Linda, was your household a religious one?

Linda Fuller: It was in the sense that we went to church every Sunday. As I look back now, I can see that a lot of the values in our family didn't exactly line up with the Bible, but that wasn't so unusual. You know, that happens quite often. But it was a very loving kind of environment, based more on physical needs. I felt like I was deprived emotionally sometimes, but the stress was on being a good person, doing right, telling the truth. A lot of good values were taught there.

The emotional deprivation, was that the rivalry with your sister, or was there other stuff going on?

Linda Fuller: I think it mostly stemmed from the background that my mother and dad come from, which is pretty typical of that generation. You know, coming out of the Depression and having so much emphasis on the material and physical needs. And then there was this Victorian hangover where you didn't really touch and feel and hug and say, "I love you" and all of that. That was just not a part of my life, but as far as being physically well taken care of, and being taught how to survive, even if another depression came along, I very much appreciate my parents.

Millard, you decided on a business career early on. Did you stay with that idea right through college?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: I did. My dad -- as I said, he was a very successful small businessman -- but he always emphasized making it and being responsible and creating wealth by your activities. He's the one that bought my little pig, and bought my sacks of feed, and showed me how to keep books, and at the end add up the expenses and then see what you sell the pig for and then you see you got a profit. That was exciting to me, and as time went along, I got into more and more business ventures. But then, when I went off to university, I met a fellow student, and the two of us went into business in a more serious way, and we started making a lot of money. We sold all kinds of products at the University of Alabama -- and Tuscaloosa, where (Linda) was. We ran Christmas tree lots. We ran a birthday cake service. We sold trashcan holders, doormats. We took our profits and began to buy land and houses, and we rented the houses out to students, and we started a mobile home park. By the time we graduated, we were making $50,000 a year as students.

That was big money back then.

Millard Fuller: Oh, it was a lot of money! And then after graduation, Linda and I moved with my partner to Montgomery, Alabama, the capital city, and went in and opened a law practice, but continued our business activities, and those business activities continued to flourish and generate a lot of money.

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