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How one burned-out adman learned that living a minimum-wage life isn’t as easy as it looks
When former U.S. Marine Corps officer Prioleau Alexander ’70 abandoned a successful advertising job in Charleston, S.C., to perform an honest day’s work at minimum wage, he found out the simple life’s not all that simple. In this excerpt from his new book, You Want Fries with That?, Alexander tackles life as a pizza delivery guy—then tries his hand at ice cream scooping, construction cleanup and fast food, among other jobs. After all, how hard can it be?
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By Prioleau Alexander ’70
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Artwork by Donna Racer
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On May 31 of last year, I quit.
Walked away. Split. At age 41, I leapt from the stern of the
foundering SS Willy Loman and began my swim against the tide, leaving behind my health insurance, paycheck and annual bonus. What inspired this plunge? It’s a long and horrific tale, but the blame lies mostly with my chosen profession—the advertising and marketing industry—which is a unique business in a suck-the-life-out-of-you sort of way. In reality, many issues within the profession broke me, so let’s skip the excruciating details and cut directly to the chase …. Imagine an America where the fast-food employees walk off the job for a week. The nation would look like a scene out of “Night of the Living Dead,” with zombies lurching through the streets looking for someone to super-size them. How about the Zippy Marts? Close those for a day, and who would feed the construction workers their morning hot dogs and Mountain Dews? Who would provide the nation’s delivery drivers their coffee and Ding Dongs? Where would wethe-people get our gas, the newspaper, our Lotto tickets, our Cheese Puffs, our beer and our $6 bean dip? It would be anarchy—complete and utter mayhem. I knew then it was my calling to undertake those jobs. It was time to immerse myself in the madness and experience the ups and downs of life at the bottom. This white-collar burnout would become a person who actually busted his butt for a living instead of someone who talked on the phone and sat in meetings and claimed he busted his butt for a living. I would live those lives and tell those tales.
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For my fi rst bottom-rung position, I decided to … experience the life of America’s most beloved road warrior: the Pizza Delivery Guy. How many times in your life have the Pizza Guys rung the doorbell at your home? Hundreds? And yet, most likely, you’ve never had any personal interaction with a single one of them. You love them, you need them, but you’ve never noticed them. Hell, the average American wouldn’t notice if it was the Elephant Man delivering their pizza, even if he took the money with one hand, made change with the other, then handed over the pizza with his trunk. Hey, here’s the check, thanks, bye. If ever there was a job with minimal client interaction, this had to be it. After my overload of client interaction, it sounded like heaven …
he plunge The fi rst thing you should know about becoming a Pizza Delivery Guy is that you aren’t just hired for it: You sign up for it. I’m pretty sure the interview process is stricter for joining that team of radical Muslims who go stomping around in minefields to detonate mines. The process in my case started with me driving to the closest national pizza chain, ferreting out the manager and simply asking for a job. He looked at me like I’d volunteered to go stomping around in minefields. “There’s a training session at our Waterfield Avenue store every Thursday night at 7 p.m.,” he said. “Go to that, then come back here.”
Interview complete. Upon my arrival at the Waterfield Avenue store the following Thursday, the counter help directed me back to a small, gray, interrogation-type room, where a second employee ordered me to take a seat among the other 12 new recruits. In the five seconds it took for me to scan the crowd, it became clear that exactly two of them appeared trustworthy enough to clean the kudzu out from behind my old office building. The other 10 either reeked of car trouble or reeked period. If they’d drug-tested us as a group, Hunter S. Thompson would
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have returned from the grave just to meet the gang and pay his respects. After a couple of minutes, a very handsome, tan and physically fit guy walked in and began our training. He told us he’d sold his nine franchises in order to move to town and become the operations manager for the local franchisee. … Mr. Tan-’n’-Fit then began to train us, and he did an excellent job. He stood up there in front of a crowd of stoned-faced, slack-jawed potential employees and actually took the time to try and make the session interesting and humorous. (No one laughed at his jokes, however, because he didn’t use the word “fart” in any of his punch lines.) We learned about company history, general operations, safety and the fact that they did not discriminate in their hiring, which is the understatement of the century. After an hour they served us some pizza, trained us for another hour and made us take a written test roughly on par with the quizzes you fi nd on the back of a Cap’n Crunch box. Then they issued our shirts and caps.
Training complete.
he road warrior My next stop was calling the manager of “my” store, and he told me to be at work the following day at 5 p.m. The store was located a mere 10-minute commute from my house, so I left at 4:40. Needless to say, my progress was delayed by a wreck on the en-route bridge and the materialization of a new road-construction area, so I didn’t make it into the store until 5:10. Being a former Marine and a maniac about promptness, I would have fi red me on the spot. “Sorry about this,” I told him. “It’s unprofessional to show up late, especially since this is my fi rst day.” The manager looked at me curiously. “Who are you?” he said. “Prioleau. Pray-Lowe. Your new driver.” “Okay, Lowe,” he said, “follow me. Let me show you how to clock in.” It didn’t occur to him to be angry with a driver for being late any more than it would occur to me to spank my dog for licking his privates. The manager worked out of, well, a closet would be the most accurate description. He leaned over a keyboard, which was hooked up to a computer that was obviously purchased from Houston Mission Control after Apollo 1 made it safely home. Auburn Magazine For Alumni & Friends of Auburn University
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“Okay, Lowe,” he said, “when you come in, hit F10 to bring up this screen, tab down to E, hit Enter, type in your employee number, hit Enter, wait for this screen to come up, then hit Enter two more times, hit F10 again, scroll down to Dispatch, and hit Enter again. Got it?” Panic and horror overcame me. I was too stupid to be a Pizza Delivery Guy. “Got it.” “Follow me,” he said. Next stop, the dispatch area—sort of like the ready room on an aircraft carrier, where the pilots await their target briefi ng. To the left stood the warming racks, where the pizzas sat when they were boxed and ready for delivery. To the right were the mobile oven bags, which cost $140 apiece because they have some sort of cold-fusion chip inside that gets charged, then radiates the heat necessary to keep the inbound pizza hot. In between these stations lay a keyboard and computer monitor (serial number 000000002—so old it had to be the second computer ever made). “You see your name up on the dispatch list?” my boss asked. “When it gets to the top, you’ll see an address next to it. That’s your run. You punch in your employee number and hit Enter. Then punch in the order number and hit Enter four times. Grab the pizza, and you’re outta here.”…
no numbers on your house or mailbox? I suppose if you’re stupid enough not to have numbers on your house or mailbox you might, but come on, people! How are the cops supposed to fi nd you? The repairman? The cable guy? The pizza guy? Ed McMahon? The frequency of houses with no numbers was so great that over a two-shift period I experimented by asking customers, “Is there a number out here that I just don’t see?” The standard response? “Uhh, no.” The response they should have given? “No, there’s not. And that’s a good question. How did you fi nd me? You must be a genius. Here’s a 20-dollar bill for not giving up.” The single worst address was 1066 Johnnie Dodds Blvd. Johnnie Dodds is a retail frontage road, so the
Four minutes after clocking in, and my first pizza was outbound.
Driven to the brink
If there is one aspect of the job that tortures a driver like flaming bamboo shoved under his fi ngernails, it is this: the absence of numbers on houses. Now, seriously, let me ask you: If a friend is coming over to your house for the fi rst time, would you give him or her a numbered address if you had
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law of averages insisted it was a store (which would no doubt have street numbers affi xed to the front). I called the phone number and got an answering machine. My second call a few minutes later again connected with a machine. The pizza was boxed and cut, so I grabbed it and left, assuming a solution to the problem would emerge in the car. The stores along Johnnie Dodds refused to yield a number 1066. The only thing left was the entrance to Crickentree, an apartment complex with 24 buildings and eight apartments per building. No one—no human on the entire planet—is so stupid he’d give an apartment complex as his address. I dialed the number on my cell phone. Again, the machine. “This is Lowe,” I said into the machine, “the Pizza Guy. I can’t fi nd your address, and you’re not answering the phone, so I’m going to have to—” “Hello?” a voice croaked. “This is Lowe. I’ve got your pizza. Where is 1066?” “Crickentree.” I was incredulous. “Okay, where in Crickentree?” “Umm, come to the stop sign, and turn right, and then take your second left, and come down, and you’ll see some people in front of my building.” “Terrific, but maybe you could give me a landmark that won’t walk away.” “Umm, there’s a tarped car out there.” “Of course there is,” I thought. Finally, we connected. The guy could not have been more stoned if you removed his brain and soaked it in a bowl of bong water. As the pizza changed hands, I asked, “How did you think I was going to fi nd you?” “Y’all have delivered here before. And I figured if you got lost, you’d call.”
“I did. You were screening your calls.” “Oh, yeah,” the guy said. And left with his pizza. It was my last run of that night. I went home to drink beer and wonder if that guy canceled out my vote in any elections.
Overall analysis of the job
When all was said and done, being a Pizza Guy is pretty cool. Why? The divine lack of client interaction. You get on your iron horse and deliver those pizza pies like a 21stcentury Pony Express rider. It was the dream job for a guy like me, except for one thing: short hours plus rip-off driving policies times minimum wage minus taxes equals no actual income. If they’d been able to give me 40 hours at a real income of $11 an hour, I’d probably still be riding the iron horse. Come on—$11 an hour for people to leave you alone? Sign me up.
You Want Fries With That? (Arcade Publishing, 2008) is Prioleau Alexander’s fi rst book. He lives in the Charleston, S.C., area, where he owns a very small advertising and public relations fi rm, Little Fish Consulting.
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G
od’s Man
The rise, fall and
resurrection of Millard Fuller
By Suzanne Johnson / Photography by Jeff Etheridge
Millard Fuller stares at the ringing phone.
It is shrill and insistent; he is tense and anxious—emotions foreign to his normal, high-octane exuberance. He clings to hope that the call will bring good news. But there will be no good news today.
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For nine months, the 70-year-old founder and president of Habitat for Humanity has scrambled to
fend off a hostile board of directors. Accusations, denials, clandestine meetings and a touch of scandal reek of corporate politics, not a Christian housing ministry. But on this day—Jan. 31, 2005—Fuller just wants to survive until Habitat’s 200,000th house is completed in August, and then he will make a graceful exit. He answers the phone, speaks quietly for a minute, hangs up. Millard Fuller’s exit from Habitat will not be graceful. In fact, it’s awkward—some will say cruel. Both he and his wife, Linda, have been fi red and ordered to leave the building, taking nothing with them—even a lifetime of personal items. Locks will be changed by day’s end and, a bit later, security guards will flank Habitat’s Americus, Ga., headquarters. Millard Fuller is no longer welcome at the organization he dreamed up almost 29 years earlier and made a household name. Fuller looks at Linda, fiercely loyal and still beautiful after 46 years of marriage. Tears, anger, prayers—all that will come later. Right now, walking away from Habitat for the fi nal time, they just feel numb.
by harvesting and selling mistletoe. He wrote a popular column for The Auburn Plainsman. Tired of fraternity boys running campus politics, he created the independent “War Eagle Party” and almost got elected student-body president. At 21, he hitched a ride to Chicago as a delegate to the 1956 Democratic National Convention. He dreamed of becoming governor of Alabama. After his 1957 graduation from Auburn, Fuller studied law at the University of Alabama and, through a wrong phone number, met his future wife in 17-year-old Linda Caldwell. He also met fellow law student Morris Dees, who would later found the Southern Poverty Law Center. But in those early years, the two men had one common ambition—to get rich. Inventive money-making ventures supported them through law school and a brief Montgomery legal practice before Fuller and Dees decided to follow the money—and the money was in marketing. Over the next five years, everything they touched turned to green, from producing cookbooks to selling tractor-seat cushions. By age 29, Millard Fuller was a millionaire. But Linda Fuller was lonely and miserable. In 1964, she had two fi ne homes, a Lincoln Continental, a pair of young children and an absentee, wealth-obsessed husband who worked 16-hour days. So she left. Left Millard, left her home, left the kids, left the state. She headed for New York City to gather her thoughts and seek the counsel of a former minister. Millard, busy making money, never saw it coming.
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Millard and Linda Fuller had faced crisis before, in another lifetime— one fi lled with shiny new cars, big houses and sky’s-the-limit ambition.
He followed her to New York. Sitting side by side on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, the couple agreed to start over and pursue God, not money. They stunned family and friends by not just rejecting the pursuit of wealth, but wealth itself.
Smart and gregarious, Fuller was a born salesman who could talk the shoes off a horse. The lanky Lanett native made pocket money at Auburn University
They got rid of it all—the houses, the cars, the business—until all they had left was each other, their children and a hunger to fi nd God’s direction for their lives.
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“The Bible says it’s difficult for the rich to get into the Kingdom, because once you start down that path of pursuing material wealth, there’s no room for anything else,” Fuller says. “It becomes all-consuming, and that’s what happened with me.” The Fullers’ spiritual journey led them to Koinonia Farm, a Christian commune on a hot, dusty stretch of blacktop between Americus and Plains, Ga., and to its founder, the Rev. Clarence Jordan. “It has been said that when the student is ready to learn, the teacher appears,” Fuller says. “And Clarence Jordan became my spiritual teacher.” A Georgia blueblood who had rejected his pedigree by studying religion instead of law, Clarence Jordan seemed an unlikely mentor for a God-seeking Alabama millionaire. Jordan was a complex blend of erudite Greek New Testament scholar, political pacifist, Georgia farmboy and religious zealot. But unlike the Fullers’ family and friends, who “thought we were nuts,” Fuller says, Jordan encouraged the couple’s decision to jettison their wealth. The Fullers traveled to Koinonia for a short visit with friends; they stayed a month, soaking up Jordan’s teachings about radical faith— that which permeates every facet of life, not just an hour on Sunday mornings. They spent two years working and divesting themselves of their assets, returned to Koinonia for four years and served a three-year stint in Africa as missionaries. Then the Fullers moved to Koinonia to stay. They planned to serve God, help their neighbors and study at the feet of Clarence Jordan. They ended up changing the world.
Today, Koinonia Farm is peaceful, so quiet
you can hear the wind rustling through the pecan groves. Laundry flaps on clotheslines, and a ceiling fan struggles to cool the unairconditioned cinder-block dining room where residents gather daily for a devotional and noon meal. People line up on both sides of a long table laden with fresh vegetables, eating and greeting.
There’s a buzz about the place today because Millard Fuller is here for lunch. At Koinonia, he’s a rock star. Forty years ago, Millard and Linda Fuller and their children arrived at Koinonia to help Clarence Jordan start a new ministry. The community still met for meals then, but things were far from peaceful. In the 1940s and early ’50s, Koinonia’s racial integration had been tolerated, but the civil rights movement had backlashed in Georgia’s Sumter County in a serious way. Clarence Jordan had become a community outcast, viewed as either a communist or a liberal—either was unacceptable. The previous decade had found Koinonia a magnet for racial violence. “Koinonia was a place where even some civil rights workers were afraid to go,” recalls Andrew Young, former U.S. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta. In 1960, The New York Times called Americus “the meanest town in America,” and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dubbed Sumter County sheriff Fred Chappell the “meanest man in the world.” The Ku Klux Klan held rallies and burned crosses. Machine-gun fi re peppered Koinonia from passing vehicles. An Americus business was bombed because the proprietor had sold supplies to the commune’s residents in defiance of a countywide economic boycott. Only two families remained at Koinonia full time when the Fullers returned from Africa in 1968, and a decade of physical and fi nancial hardship had taken its toll. The farm had survived on Clarence Jordan’s mail-order pecan business, with its half-joking motto: “Help us ship the nuts out of Georgia.”
An older woman helps a red-haired toddler fi ll her plate. A young couple, recent seminary graduates, gush about their new church positions. Emily, fresh from graduation at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, is studying permaculture—21st-century lingo for sustainable farming. Jake, a baby-faced 20-something on his own spiritual quest, leads the devotional and reflects on the comfort he fi nds in knowing Jesus’ disciples were as flawed as he sees himself.
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Fuller credits Jordan with turning his life around, but current Koinonia director Bren Dubay says it worked both ways. “Clarence needed Millard—he arrived at a time when Clarence had been abandoned, and they served as an inspiration to each other.”
Congo, now the country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo), he jumped at the chance to test the Koinonia Partners housing model in another setting. By the time the Fullers returned to Americus three years later, they had used the Koinonia model to start 114 houses in the capital city of the equator region, Mbandaka, and 300 more in its southern environs.
Fuller and Jordan began looking around Sumter County for a way to put their Christian beliefs into action.
Fuller realized that partnership housing could work on an even larger scale. Sitting on the floor of an abandoned Koinonia chicken barn in 1976, Fuller and a few friends held a planning meeting for a new housing ministry that would seek to wipe out poverty housing in every country on earth.
“We came up with the idea of Koinonia Partners,” Fuller says. The ministry would have three phases—preaching, teaching and Habitat for Humanity was born. action—and part of the “action” would involve building houses for Building a future: Linda and Millard Fuller The meteoric rise of Habitat for poor families. Following what Humanity is well known. Its growth was Fuller called “Kingdom Econommatched only by its founder’s energy as ics” and “The Theology of the Hammer,” Koinonia he trekked around the world, preaching to whoever would listen sought no profit off its houses, charged no interest about the self-confi dence that owning a simple, decent home could and provided volunteer labor. Potential homeowners provide a struggling family. The group outgrew one Americus buildwould accumulate “sweat equity” by helping build ing after another; the meanest town in America had suddenly betheir own homes and those of others. As they repaid come home to the champions of poor people, black and white, the their interest-free mortgages, the money would be world over. funneled into materials for more houses. Bo and Emma Johnson, a black couple raising five children in a ramshackle shack near Koinonia, became the fi rst house recipients. Koinonia crackled with an excitement that hadn’t been seen in years. But the project was soon dealt a serious blow. Just before the last wall was erected on the Johnson house in October 1969, 57-year-old Clarence Jordan died suddenly of a massive heart attack. He was buried on the Koinonia grounds, farm residents, family members and a gathering of Sumter County poor the only mourners in a community that still viewed Koinonia’s founder with contempt. Millard Fuller pushed on. “We were in shock, but we felt that this was God’s calling on our lives, to do this housing ministry,” he says. “We couldn’t quit.” More houses followed the Johnson residence, and the ministry grew. But by 1973, Fuller was restless. When a missionary opportunity arose in Zaire (the former Belgian
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In 1984, Fuller scored a coup by persuading Sumter County’s most famous son, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, to embrace Habitat. Carter’s high profi le helped make the nonprofit a household name. As the decade passed, Habitat’s headquarters covered a full city block and spilled into surrounding neighborhoods, employing hundreds in Americus and many more in regional offices around the United States and Canada. Behind the scenes, however, Millard Fuller’s vision for Habitat was increasingly at odds with the Habitat board. As the organization grew, seats on the board became coveted spots for high-powered business leaders with corporate sensibilities. For Fuller, Habitat was still a movement, not a business. In 1990, the board made its fi rst move to oust Fuller, demanding his resignation after several female employees accused him of inappropriate conduct. Each charge was true, Fuller says. One woman said he had complimented her eyes; another charged that he had hugged her. A third said he had introduced her to someone as a “beautiful woman,” while a fourth said he had sneaked up behind her and put his hands over her eyes in a game of “guess-who.” Linda Fuller had been present for some of these incidents, Fuller says.
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He was mortified. “I had metamorphosed into the head of a billiondollar, international nonprofit organization, but I still thought of myself as a Southern country boy—it’s the culture I was raised in,” Fuller says. “The board said it was sexual harassment, and I was just astounded. I didn’t even know the meaning of the term—remember, this was before the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill incident. But I told them that if I had offended these women, I would ask for forgiveness.” He sent letters of apology to each of the women, but the Habitat board still wanted his resignation, prompting Jimmy Carter to send a missive to its directors. “As far as Habitat is concerned, a mountain has been made out of a molehill,” Carter wrote. Georgia builder John Wieland, a major Habitat donor and former board member, concurred, later telling The Washington Post, “Millard was a hugger and was misinterpreted, and some people went out of their way to make something big out of something that wasn’t really that big.” The Habitat board backed down, but the incident became part of Fuller’s history—a part that would come back to haunt him some 15 years later. On the surface, the organization seemed unstoppable. By 2004, Habitat was one of the nation’s biggest charities, raising more than $400 million a year and managing 2,100 affi liates in 100 countries. Fuller had spoken in more than 75 nations, published nine books, received more than 50 honorary degrees and earned a slew of prestigious national awards, including the United States’ highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In his 2007 autobiography Music of a Thousand Hammers: Inside Habitat for Humanity, former Habitat board chairman Paul Leonard describes the growing tensions between Fuller and the board: “The question at the center of most of my differences with Millard was whether Habitat for Humanity, as currently structured, staffed and directed, with a presence in 100 countries, had a chance of significantly addressing the mission of eliminating poverty housing from the world.” The board thought the answer was no; Fuller thought it should be yes. By 2004, Fuller’s relationship with the board was strained—and about to get worse.
The first hint of open warfare
came in March 2004. Board chairman Rey Ramsey, who had taken office the previous year, called Fuller during a three-week tour of Asian Habitat sites. “He called while we were in
But as Habitat continued to grow throughout the 1990s, so too did the tension between Fuller and the board. The biggest points of disagreement, he says, centered around two main areas:
Vision. Fuller continued to see Habitat as a movement, morally obligated to continue expansion indefi nitely. The board, he says, wanted to hedge growth and build its fi nancial reserves. Fuller wanted to continue the partnership-housing model, allowing far-flung affi liates to operate with a large measure of autonomy. The board wanted to “overcontrol things,” Fuller says. Fuller still saw Habitat as, fi rst and foremost, a Christian organization; he felt the board had established the Habitat name itself as the driving force behind its work and that the organization was growing too secular—something Habitat leaders deny. Structure. Habitat board members wanted to move a portion of the group’s headquarters from Americus to Atlanta for easy airport access and a potentially higher profi le. Fuller believed Habitat should stay put—in Americus, overhead costs were cheaper, and Habitat played a major role in the local economy. Fuller says the board also wanted bigger salaries for Habitat leaders—something he had always refused.
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Hong Kong and said a woman had accused me of touching her inappropriately on the way to the airport. I told him that was a bunch of baloney and just wasn’t true,” Fuller says. The woman, a Habitat employee who later resigned, accused Fuller of touching her on the arm, thigh and neck and complimenting her complexion while she was giving him a ride from Americus to Atlanta, Fuller says. The alleged incident had happened more than a year earlier and no complaint had been fi led. Fuller remembered the ride—employees often carpooled to save money—but remained adamant that nothing untoward had occurred. Fuller offered to meet with Ramsey and the woman to sort the issue out, but Ramsey refused—the board had already hired a New York law fi rm to represent its position, Fuller says. Ramsey also had already been in touch with his predecessor on the board, Paul Leonard, asking if he’d be willing to step in if needed. Leonard recalls the conversation with Ramsey about the alleged sexual misconduct: “Such an accusation would have seemed outrageous to almost anyone who knew much about Millard Fuller. He was a great man, a visionary, a person of mountain-moving faith, and his vision and faith had made believers over the years out of thousands of skeptics—including me.” It was more than a month before Fuller had a chance to formally defend himself before the board at an April 29 emergency meeting in New York. Given an hour to present his case, he felt it had gone well—so he was shocked by a memo he received a short time later saying the board found he had “most likely” engaged in inappropriate conduct. The memo was dated April 26, three days before the meeting had even taken place. Clearly, he says, the board meeting was just a formality. “I knew the board was upset with me, but the real issues were moving the board to Atlanta, the question of expansion, the building up of big reserves and salaries,” Fuller says. “But they weren’t willing to take me on about the issues.” Over the next eight months, Fuller would try to clear his name. He voluntarily took a polygraph test that supported his innocence. Jimmy Carter interceded twice on Fuller’s behalf, to no avail. Finally, Fuller brought in noted labor attorney Griffi n Bell, who said the Habitat board didn’t have a case. During this time, ironically, Fuller was named “CEO of the Year” by The Nonprofit Times. In June, with Paul Leonard stepping in as managing director and Fuller relieved of many of his duties, the Habitat board made Fuller an offer—he could continue fundraising and public appearances as president and CEO as long as he signed a non-disparagement agreement and spoke to no one about what had transpired. He could then
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retire after his 70th birthday, with lifetime salary and benefits. No one outside the organization would be the wiser. Reluctantly, the Fullers signed the agreement.
“I’m sure their leadership believes what they are doing is right,” Fuller says of the changes. “But, in my opinion, they’re sincerely wrong.”
By Georgia law, the couple had a period of time in which to change their minds before the agreement was legally binding, and the more Fuller thought about it, the worse he felt. “I felt like I was selling my soul, and like I was admitting to something that just wasn’t true,” he says. Before the prescribed time lapsed, the Fullers revoked the agreement and asked the board to consider reinstating him to management duties. The board refused.
On a hot dusty day in 1985, Jacob Battle looked out the door of his neighborhood grocery, its bins fi lled with homegrown fruits and vegetables. He stared at an unusual sight—a tall couple walking down the dusty street. It wasn’t their height that surprised him; it was their race. White folks didn’t generally stroll through this part of Americus.
By January 2005, things were at an impasse. The board had dropped the allegations of inappropriate conduct but said Fuller was damaging Habitat by openly discussing the problems. According to the Leonard autobiography, by the time the Fullers were fi red, two senior managers had already left and six others would resign within the next year. At least one board member who disagreed with the Fullers’ fi ring also resigned. A group of Habitat volunteers rallied to temporarily put down their hammers in a work stoppage to protest the fi ring, and a Web site collected about 5,000 signatures calling for Fuller’s reinstatement. Habitat might be in turmoil, but the Fullers were out. Despite all that transpired, Fuller was surprised when the board actually fi red him. “I really had a hard time believing they would take the fi nal step of throwing us out,” he says. “But when they did, they literally ran me and my wife out of the place I had thrown my whole heart into.” Within a year, Fuller says, Habitat for Humanity moved senior management to Atlanta and raised administrative salaries—as CEO, the largest salary Fuller had ever accepted was $79,000 per year; according to The New York Times, new CEO Jonathan Reckford started at $210,000. When Fuller left Habitat, the organization boasted building partners in 100 countries; that number has been scaled back to 90, Fuller says. Local affi liates were sent lengthy new agreements giving Habitat greater control over their fi nances and charging interest on mortgage loans outside the United States; as of January, 400 chapters still had not signed the agreement, and a San Antonio chapter has fi led a lawsuit over it. Reckford told The Chronicle of Philanthropy that local affi liates were free to end their relationship with Habitat if they did not wish to sign the new agreement.
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More than two decades later, Battle throws his head back and laughs with a broad, gap-toothed wheeze. “I knew right then I needed to know that man. I needed to know a man who wasn’t afraid of anything.” Jacob Battle had just met Millard and Linda Fuller, taking an afternoon walk through what Battle calls “the ’hood.” The three have been friends ever since. In 2005, Battle had the chance to see Millard Fuller’s lack of fear in action as he quickly rebounded from the Habitat fiasco with characteristic determination. A few phone calls got it started. A former Habitat associate in north Georgia sent money for the Fullers to rehire their assistants, who had both quit in protest after the fi ring. Former Habitat board member Wieland, hearing that Fuller wanted to start a new housing ministry, bought and renovated a house in Americus to serve as the new headquarters—then donated money to get the venture started. Paul Amos, one of the founders of Aflac Insurance Co., headquartered in Columbus, Ga., and Ted and Vada Stanley of Connecticut committed a total of $1 million to help Fuller get going again. Within the fi rst three months, the new Fuller Center for Housing had amassed more than $2 million in pledges and donations. One of the fi rst members of the Fuller Center’s new board: Jacob Battle. The site of the center’s fi rst board meeting: Koinonia Farm. Millard Fuller had come back home.
During this summer’s Fuller Center Bicycle Adventure, volunteers will bike from San Diego to Savannah, building houses along the way and working to raise $100,000 for center projects.
“How are you doing today?” the man shouted cheerfully, waving a long, skinny, plaid-shirted arm. “I’m working,” Battle replied. “What are you doing?” “Making sure people like you can walk through this neighborhood and stay safe.” “I’m not afraid to walk here,” the man answered. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
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Now three years old, the Fuller Center has already grown more than twice as fast as Habitat did in its early years, with housing partnerships in 14 countries and 45 U.S. cities. One of its fi rst projects, still ongoing, was to build houses in Shreveport, La., for homeless Hurricane Katrina refugees. The center supports projects by some Habitat chapters as well as its own “covenant partners”—organizations that commit to specific projects. The housing ministry has expanded to include renovations and repairs of existing homes on a customized, interest-free payment plan that allows them to help families—particularly the elderly—who could not meet the income requirements of organizations such as Habitat—the “poorest of the poor,” Fuller calls them. A Chattahoochee Valley Fuller Center partner is working to eradicate poverty housing in areas of eastcentral Alabama and west-central Georgia decimated by the collapse of the textile industry—it plans to build and renovate about 500 homes. The Habitat organization in Armenia, upset over Habitat’s new policy of mandating that homeowners pay mortgage interest, has signed on with the Fuller Center instead.
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And, fi nally, with the 2007 publication of a Fuller biography, Bettie Youngs’ The House That Love Built, Millard and Linda Fuller were able to tell their side of the Habitat story. Traces of frustration still dampen Fuller’s exuberance as he talks about the last few years, but he insists he has no agenda against Habitat for Humanity and that the Fuller Center is not in competition. “You don’t spend 28 years of your life on something and then hope that it does poorly. I hope Habitat for Humanity continues to thrive. There’s plenty of need to go around.” He’s also gained some perspective. Swiveling in his desk chair, Fuller pulls a folded copy of The Chronicle of Philanthropy out of a drawer and punches a front-page photo with an index fi nger. The picture is of him; the headline reads “A Parting of Ways: Lack of Communication is Behind Many Executive Firings.” “I’m the poster boy for this article,” he says. “The fi ring of founders is more common than you might think.” And he has a point. A 2006 survey of 2,000 nonprofit executive directors found that more than a third had been hired to replace a leader who had been fi red, forced out or resigned because of philosophical differences with their boards. Highly publicized flameouts of what nonprofit watchdogs call “founderitis” include Mothers Against Drunk Drivers founder Candy Lightner and One Laptop Per Child exec Walter Bender. “It’s a common phenomenon, and I think the reason is that people like me are hard chargers; we’re entrepreneurs,” Fuller says. “When the organization gets more successful, you get a more staid, conservative board of directors that doesn’t want to take risks. It’s sort of a modern-day version of the Joseph story.” In the Bible, dreamer Joseph was thrown into a well and left for dead by his brothers, who saw him as a troublemaker. “The board used to say about me, ‘Millard’s dreams are our nightmares’ because I was always coming up with something new,” Fuller says. He chuckles, looks at the article a moment, then refolds it and fi rmly sticks it back in the drawer as if to say, “What’s done is done.” After all, Joseph escaped the well and ended up ruling Egypt. He fishes out the keys to his old Ford Taurus and heads to Koinonia for some fresh vegetables and a noontime devotion. Animated, he strides toward the car as he rattles off new covenant partners for the Fuller Center and the urgent need for better housing. He might be 73 now, but there’s no time to slow down. Millard Fuller remains what he has always been: a man on a mission.
www.fullercenter.org
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What do these 10 books have in common? Each sparked an AU professor to respond, “Eureka!”
Photography by Jeff Etheridge
Sinclair Lewis was a cynic. “Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead,” he lectured upon winning the nation’s fi rst Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. But Lewis never met Auburn University computer scientist Saad Biaz, who fell under the spell of French general and statesman Charles de Gaulle, or physics professor Edward Thomas, whose life and work were affected by his reading of the Frank Herbert science fiction classic, Dune. Other writers who have inspired Auburn faculty members include preacher Norman Vincent Peale, children’s author Watty Piper and ’70s sage Richard Bach. Each year, the AU Libraries asks newly tenured or promoted faculty to select a book important to their lives and adorns their choices with commemorative bookplates. To date, Sinclair Lewis’ books haven’t appeared on Auburn’s faculty list of inspirational tomes. Here’s a sample of those that have.
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Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach “This is a simple, timeless and profound story about the importance of seeking a higher purpose in life, something beyond the status quo, even if your flock doesn’t approve or fi nds your ambition threatening. I have revisited this book many times over the years when my life’s direction was unclear or when my resolve faltered.” Debra Beard Veterinary Medicine
The Natural Superiority of Women by Ashley Montagu “The Natural Superiority of Women … became a serial in the Saturday Evening Post, leading to the formation of the National Organization for Women in 1966. I fi rst read it in the 1970s when I was in college. It is the one book that I remember best because it had such a powerful impact, forcing me to challenge the views I held about myself and women in general. Montagu’s work is especially appealing because it is based upon scientific evidence that is contrary to general thoughts on gender and the typical roles associated with gender. It encourages women to become courageous; it challenges us to take the responsibility in assuming leadership roles that will have a greater impact on improving the quality of life for all of society.” Paula Bobrowski Political Science
The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale “In my early teens, I came across The Power of Positive Thinking in my family’s library. The insights and concepts that Peale explained in his book were immediately helpful as I excelled in high school, college and graduate school. By facing life’s challenges, whether personal or professional, with a positive attitude and spiritual faith, many of these difficulties can be overcome. The personal growth and development I experienced from reading his book as a teenager shaped who I am today.” Leonard Bell Nutrition and Food Sciences
The Last Steam Railroad in America by O. Winston Link and Thomas H. Garver “This book is perhaps the best of many illustrations of modern steam railroading in the United States. The mechanical allure, the smells, sounds and the dramatic excitement of the steam locomotive captivated my imagination as a small child and fi rst motivated me to study engineering and to see engineering as more than the sum of mathematics and scientific principles, even though steam was largely gone from the American landscape before I was born. The photographic work of Link in the 1950s illustrates in compelling terms the weaving of the engineering of railroads into the rural fabric of a culture, adding up to far more than just pictures of trains. This work is more about art, culture and history than engineering, but it illustrates the inextricable connection between engineering and the fabric of life as we know it …” Roy Hartfield Aerospace Engineering
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African Intellectual Heritage: A Book of Sources Molefi Kete Asante and Abu S. Abarry, Editors “Having been educated from preschool through professional school by scholars who primarily subscribed to schools of thought which rarely diverged from Western ideology, I was hungry for work that reinforced my spirit. My doctoral adviser, Susie Spence, gave me this book as a gift for successfully defending my comprehensive exams. I plowed through it—being introduced to and reminded of Pharoh Peop, Haremham, Amilcar Cabral, Paul Robeson, Kwame Nkrumah, Anna Julia Cooper and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and their writings on resistance, culture, religion and creation was an awakening. This text … encourages us to be bold in our understanding and critique of life and those who live it.” Denise Davis-Maye Social Work
Dune by Frank Herbert “Frank Herbert’s Dune was one of the fi rst ‘grownup’ science fiction novels I ever read. Over the years, as I have re-read it, I have always found new insights and inspirations from the wonderful universe he created. Even today, over 40 years after its original publication, its overlapping themes of environmentalism, political intrigue, religious fanaticism and economics remain as powerful as ever.” Edward Thomas Physics
Denise Davis-Maye, College of Liberal Arts
Memoires de Guerre by Charles de Gaulle “I selected this book due to the character of the author and his political clairvoyance and independence. Highly educated and with a deep sense of history, this man won battles for France that few are aware of. A military man who did not behave like one. A political man who did not behave like one (did not build a fortune for him or his family out of his public service). A proud man who resisted all forms of pressure, even from his friends. At every step of his life, he stayed in touch with the realities and served well his country. And beyond everything, (he had) a great sense of humor!” Saad Biaz Computer Science and Software Engineering
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Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton and Rose Friedman “Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose has proven to be an enormously powerful and influential work—a clearly written and soundly reasoned work exploring the essential linkages between individual freedom and a free-market economy. We studied many of the ideas contained therein when I was an undergraduate, and I still use it as a platform from which to undertake discussions in my current teaching 25 years later. I have had the good fortune to travel with Auburn University student groups around the world, and we have been able to observe these same inexorable forces playing out in Europe and in Asia, even while some here in the United States overlook and downplay them.” Daniel Gropper Economics
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper “This has been a favorite book of mine since childhood. I have many fond memories of reading this book with my parents and learning the lesson of never giving up. This is still a lesson that I hold onto and try to pass on to those I interact with.” Kristi Kelley Pharmacy
Saad Biaz, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering
Solo for Piano by Lukas Foss “I was a music composition student at a university in the Midwest when the composer/ conductor Lukas Foss came to campus for a few days. Music faculty members were pressed into service to perform one of his compositions in honor of the visit. I happened to be in the wings after the performance and overheard the performers muttering relief at never having to play or hear that piece again … The faculty’s sentiments were due, I believe, to the fact that the piece was decidedly nontraditional. At the time, I was unaccustomed to music of that sort and found the piece confusing but nevertheless strangely appealing. I observed that many well-thought-of musicians were dedicated to such music and reasoned that there must be something in it, which, with practice, one could learn to hear and appreciate. I have since come to treasure many modern compositions. “The incident helped me to see the value of being open to new ways of listening, and indeed open to new ideas in general—be they artistic, scientific, social (or) philosophical.” Randall Holmes Mathematics
For more faculty picks, visit www.lib.auburn.edu/bookplates/.
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