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Shelby Foote
Novelist and Historian
Shelby Foote: The first dreadful thing that happened to me was the death of my father before I was six years old. We were in Mobile, Alabama. My father had just been promoted to general manager of Armour and Company in that part of the country. And he had an operation for a deviated septum or something, and septicemia set in and he died in two days. The bookkeeper from Armour and Company was given the job of telling me that he had died. My mother was in no shape to tell me anything. So he took me outside the hospital, and we sat in one of these swings that's in a stand, and they had two seats, and the swings between them. And he said, "Shelby, I have some bad news for you. Your father has gone away." And I said, "Do you mean he died?" And the shock must have -- he was shocked at me talking that way. And he said, "Yes, I'm afraid that's what it is." And then I felt a huge responsibility. There I am, the survivor, five years old. And I wanted to measure up to the responsibility, so I asked him a question that nearly made him fall out of the swing. I said, "Who is going to get his money?" I thought it was a responsible thing to ask.
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Carlos Fuentes
Author, Scholar & Diplomat
I went to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, and was promptly denied a visa. I asked why, and they said, "We can't tell you why. It's a secret." So I was left stranded and classified forever under the Undesirable Aliens list. I asked once, "Do you ever get out of that list? Can I ever get out?" and they said, "No, no, no." I said, "Even hell has its limits. Even in hell you are promised that one day everybody will go to purgatory or to heaven; hell is not forever. Surely, the denial of a visa is not forever." They said, "No, no, you can come out with a visa." How? "If you demonstrate your allegiance to the cause of anti-Communism." I said, "Well, that is something I will never do just on the principle of it. I am not a Communist, but I will not go to that McCarthyite length."
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Millard Fuller
Founder, Habitat for Humanity International
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.
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