Millard Fuller Interview (page: 5 / 9) Founder, Habitat for Humanity International	Print Interview

That partner that you met in law school was Morris Dees, who is quite a significant figure in his own right. Can you tell us how that friendship came about? What was the partnership like?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: Morris Dees came out of a similar background. He was from a small town near Montgomery called Mount Meigs, raised up in a Christian home, went to church. His father was a successful farmer, and he had gotten involved in some business ventures as a teenager and had been pretty successful at it. He also was interested in politics, and at that time, in Alabama, there was no such thing as Republican politics. Everybody was a Democrat. So he was involved in Democratic politics. I was at another university, getting my undergraduate degree at Auburn University. I had formed a political party, had gotten involved in Democratic politics, was a delegate as a 21-year-old to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and then went to law school at the University of Alabama. And the first week that I was there, I saw a notice that there was a Young Democrats meeting, and I went to the Young Democrats meeting, held at the Student Union Building, and the first person to greet me at the door was Morris Dees. And of course, I didn't know him, didn't know a thing about him, but we just went together. We just went together, just like that, sat together at the meeting, and at the end of it, he asked me where I lived. And I told him I was a few blocks away. So he gave me a ride. I had walked over. And we sat in his car in front of the house. I was renting a basement underneath the house of a family, and we sat down until 3:00 in the morning, talking about the things that we had been doing with our lives up to that point. And we saw that we had so many mutual interests, and we went in business that night, and we decided to go in business. We were in business eight years.

Were there ever any disagreements between the two of you?

Millard Fuller: Never. We were just amazingly like two peas in a pod, and the only worry that I ever had was that he was outworking me, and he always felt the same way about me. We just worked hard, and we were dedicated to making our various business enterprises a success, and we had a huge success, but what happened, and what eventually caused the change in my life, was it became obsessive. Being in business and making money was just everything, and everything else in my life got subordinated to that.

How did that play out, Linda, since you probably were the one who felt it the most?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Linda Fuller: I met Millard when he was still in law school and had just gone in business with Morris. And in the afternoons -- I was a senior in high school, while he was in law school, a big age difference. My mother didn't like that so much, but, you know, that was okay. And so in the afternoon sometimes, I would go over and I would help paint these student apartments that -- they had bought the houses -- and were fixing up to rent. At night, we would deliver birthday cakes, because one of the things was a birthday cake service. And so I would deliver in the girls' dorms and he would deliver in the boys' dorm. And so he got me involved in these business ventures, even before we married.

Is it true that it was through a mistake that he got to know you, and that you started dating?

Linda Fuller: Oh, not a mistake, but it was an unusual circumstance.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. He called me up one night, this was during the summertime. And you know, he was looking for another girl that he had met when he was selling desk blotter ads at a movie theater. She was selling tickets, and after he finished his business with the theater owner, she was gone. And they would not give her phone number. So he was very persistent, and very determined whenever he wants to meet somebody or talk to somebody. He got the Tuscaloosa phone directory and started calling all the Caldwells, and I think I was about the third one that answered. And I knew this person he was looking for. And so, in the course of me looking through the directory, trying to help him find the telephone number for this other girl, we struck up a conversation. I myself was looking for a tall guy to date, and so one of my first questions to him was, "How tall are you?" and when he said six-four, well, you know, I fumbled around. I didn't give him this other girl's phone number. And he came over that night. We went out and had a Coca-Cola at the Student Building at the university, and dated my whole senior year of high school. Millard Fuller: And a year later, we're married. Linda Fuller: And a year later, married.

So you became a team, both in your personal life and helping in the business?

Millard Fuller: But that changed after we moved to Montgomery, and that created part of the problem.

How do you mean?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: She started to college, went back to college, and eventually got her degree while having two children at the same time, but we went separate ways. My life was over here running this business, law practice. Eventually, we closed down the law practice and devoted full time to business. We started publishing cookbooks, selling tractor seats and candy and toothbrushes, and developed a big business, a multi-million-dollar business with hundreds of employees, and I never saw her anymore. I mean, it was like I abandoned her. Linda Fuller: Oh, you could come home for supper and then go right back to work.

That's the story of a lot of people in America, particularly at that time.

Millard Fuller: Right, but a lot of it had devastating consequences on the families, too. A lot of people in politics, their personal life falls apart, and a lot of people who are in a head-long rush to make success in business ventures, their family life falls apart. And ours almost fell apart. She ended up leaving me and going to New York City, and we were almost divorced. And that's what precipitated a change in our lives.

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