Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

I met Millard Fuller back in 1986, when the two of us were sitting in the green room of a radio station in Boston, waiting to go on live to plug each of our respective books. At that time, Habitat for Humanity, the organization that Millard had founded with his wife, Linda, was celebrating its tenth anniversary. Millard was on a book tour to promote “No More Shacks: The Daring Vision of Habitat for Humanity.” I was a first-time author, on my maiden-voyage book tour with “The Singular Generation: Young Americans in the 1980s,” hot off the press from Doubleday.

Millard was larger than life, tall, charismatic, brilliant but most of all friendly. To call him a “people person” was an understatement. He loved people — anyone and everyone he encountered. Unlike the garden-variety, self-centered celebrity, he had a voracious curiosity and wanted to have an impact on those he touched. Millard and I were already deep into conversation, exchanging our life stories, when the show host burst into the room.

He extended his hand to Millard. “Millard Fuller,” he repeated. “Millard Fuller. I just want to be sure that I don’t say Millard Fillmore when I introduce you.”

My interview came first and went off without a hitch, but when Millard went on the air, the radio host said: “We have a remarkable guest with us this evening, a man of faith and vision, a man who has brought housing to thousands of people — Millard Fillmore.”

Five years had passed until I saw Millard again, this time when my then-husband Frank Levering and I traveled to Americus, Georgia in 1991 to interview the Fullers for our forthcoming book, “Simple Living: One Couple’s Search for a Better Life.” By that time, Habitat was a darling of the media, Millard’s name and face was everywhere in the press along with that of Jimmy Carter, his most famous volunteer. The Habitat campus was an enormous presence in the city of Americus, consuming blocks. Our tape recorder was all set up in the Fullers’ modest home within walking distance of Habitat headquarters. When we finally got the hyperkinetic Millard seated for the interview, I extended my hand, “Actually, we’ve met before,” I started.

“Yes,” he interrupted, a broad smile animating his face. “That radio interviewer up in Boston got some egg on his face, calling me Millard Fillmore.”

That I remembered meeting a celebrity like Millard Fuller was not surprising, but for Millard to recall our encounter in Boston on a dime — given all the miles he had traveled and interviews he had given since — was nothing short of extraordinary.

But it was so much more than his extraordinary recall that made him a giant among men. It was the way that he and Linda conducted their lives; their steadfast Christian faith put them at odds with others more than once. I was on the outskirts of his skirmishes with the Habitat organization on such issues as executive compensation (he believed in modest salaries for himself and other top officials, which cut against the grain of the fast-growing organization); he believed in anchoring Habitat in the small Georgia town which had birthed it, despite the lures of big-city suitors, like Atlanta. He even, as I recall, fought losing battles against such notions as air conditioning and second bathrooms in Habitat houses domestically, reasoning that a greater number of decent homes could be built if you pared the amenities to a minimum. He was at core a simple liver who had seen enough poverty housing around the world to disparage “the frills” — even in Habitat homes.

And so it is with great sadness that I received the news yesterday of Millard’s death on February 2. Yesterday I went through the motions, going to Rotary, working on my latest assignment, making dinner for my son. But something had changed permanently; a great oak had fallen in my life that would never return.

After our meeting in 1991, the relationship with the Fullers grew closer. Linda Fuller signed onto the Simple Living National Advisory board as we worked to raise the funds to launch the first nationally syndicated series on sustainable living in 2004. Linda frequently traveled to North Carolina at her own expense to participate in our advisory board meetings. She and Millard donated a weekend of their time in 2001 to our first major fund-raising event, held to an overflow crowd at the Old Town Club in Winston-Salem. Linda and Millard both appeared on our program. And we visited with them in Atlanta and Americus on numerous occasions.

I’ll never forget their pain over their involuntary parting from the Habitat organization back in 2005. That year, while visiting them in Sumter County, Millard took Linda and me on a boat ride. Out on the water, he said: “When something like this happens you know who your friends are, and you have fewer than you thought.”

But their Christian faith prevented the anguish of being ousted from the organization that they founded from turning bitter or poisonous. Before long, they were back in the business of helping others obtain affordable housing, founding the Fuller Center for Housing. Life will never be quite the same with Millard not among the living. Rest in peace, great servant, remarkable man.