Millard Fuller Interview (page: 6 / 9) Founder, Habitat for Humanity International	Print Interview

Linda, what was it that finally made you decide to leave your husband when you were having these problems?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Linda Fuller: I was still in my 20s, my early 20s, and after I finished my courses at the college, which was just a couple of blocks down the street, I didn't need to work. I got my degree in elementary education. I basically wanted to stay home with the two kids that we had had during the course of me getting a college education, and didn't need to work, had all the money, you know. I had my own bank account, my own Lincoln Continental, we had a cabin on the lake. So what more could a woman want, right? I was probably one of the most miserable human beings in Montgomery, Alabama, but I didn't know what to do. Here, everybody was just gloating over these two young men that were making themselves millionaires, basically overnight, and I was just miserable, and I was miserable for my kids -- our kids -- too, because they saw their father at suppertime, and that was about it. I didn't want to live the rest of my life like this. So not knowing what to do -- we had lived in New York City for short periods of time, I knew a pastor up there -- and I just told Millard, I said, "I've got to go away for a while and think and get some counseling and pray and figure out what we can do." I think it was a bit of a shock to him.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: It was not a bit of a shock. It was a total shock. I mean, since a very early age, I have always been in charge of whatever I was doing. I was the person that was making the decisions, and here she was sitting on the edge of our king-size bed telling me she didn't love me. And she was deciding what was going to happen next, and I couldn't believe it. I mean, I was thinking to myself, you've got 2,000 acres of land, and you can go out and choose any one of 30 horses to ride, and you've got two speedboats, and you've got a cabin on a lake and you've got a maid and you've got so many clothes you can't get them in the closet, and you've got a Lincoln Continental, and you've got everything, but I could see in her face and in her voice that she was totally unhappy, and she was thinking about leaving me. And that brought back this flood of my mother dying suddenly, and the dream that I had had all my life of having a loving family, and here it was falling apart. It's difficult to communicate what a devastating effect it had on me, and nothing seemed to be important anymore, just nothing. And she left and I was just -- it was probably the most miserable time of my life while she was in New York, and I didn't know what was going to happen next. It was out of my control.

But ultimately, you decided to do something.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: Eventually. She wouldn't see me for quite a while, and eventually, I became so torn up that I couldn't sit at home. And what I did was take the children to grandparents and rented an airplane and a pilot. Our company had a pilot, and we just got in the airplane and flew to Niagara Falls, just because I was just totally torn up. And we just went up there, just riding around in this airplane and flying over Niagara Falls and got a hotel room. And I was calling Linda every couple of hours saying, you know, "Will you please see me?" So eventually, she agreed to, and we flew then from Niagara Falls to New York, and the pilot went on back home. He didn't know, I was ashamed of what was going on, and I didn't tell anybody. The pilot had no idea what was going on, but I just went into the hotel and saw her, and that's when the reconciliation started.

How did you come to that reconciliation? What agreement did you come to?

Millard Fuller: Well, we just poured out a bunch of stuff that had built up over these years that we had been married, and we had grown apart.

Linda Fuller: See, I used to beg him to stay home some with me and the two children in the evenings. And I can remember one time actually going out to the car and just physically trying to keep him from going to the office, and I would even go down to the office a couple of times and just tell him, "I'm miserable. Please stay home some," and he would then, for a while, and then he'd fall right back in the same patterns.

But this time you came to a very radical decision.

Millard Fuller: I don't want to overdramatize it.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We really had an emotional reconciliation, standing on a street just off of Fifth Avenue in New York, and holding each other and crying. And so it was really when we got in a taxi and started back to the hotel -- and there was a sensation of light in the taxi, and it was not anything spooky or mystical. It was just a sensation of light is all I can -- the only way I can express it. And at that moment, there was a revelation that came to me, and that was, "You should give everything you got away and start over." And I just turned to Linda and I said I just felt very strongly a presence that -- and "I just feel like we should give everything we got away and seek God in our lives." We both came from Christian homes, but we had gotten so far away from it, and she didn't hesitate a minute. She said, "I think that's what you should do."

[ Key to Success ] Vision

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Linda Fuller: We were so much in love when we were married, and it was so sad, you know, to have seen that just dissipate over those five or six years, and so I saw the money, and all the houses and material possessions as what had caused us to drift apart, and that struck a real chord with me, just to get rid of all that stuff that had caused us to drift apart.

What did you give away?

Linda Fuller: Everything. We sold the house, and then we gave that money away.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: Morris Dees and I had had a business agreement where if either one of us wanted to leave, we'd give the other one the opportunity to buy us out. So I contacted him, and we made arrangements, and every penny of the sale we gave away from the company. We didn't save one single penny. We gave all of it away. And like she said, over a period of time, we just got rid of all of our other assets, and we went on a pilgrimage. We didn't know what we would do. We had no earthly idea. She was like 24 years old. I was 29, and we just decided to seek for God's path for us. We didn't know what that would be.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

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