It was just a small bruise, but it looked like a zinger. The kind of zinger where a split-second mind flutter causes the hammer to come down flat on the thumbnail. With pain shooting through hand, the wounded jumps back a few feet and the thumb comes flying into the mouth to stave off the pain. The bruise that’s left over is buried deep under the nail and it’s the kind of purple that makes the casual observer wince.
Welcome to Millard Fuller’s dream. He fulfilled part of it earlier this week.
“In the military, you get a Purple Heart,” Fuller said, showing off a day-old bruise on one of his thumbs, the clear mark of the hammer. “In Habitat, you get purple bruises.”
Fuller is the founder and leader of Habitat for Humanity International, and his vision is to bring affordable and decent homes to blighted areas all over the world, stamping out poverty along with it.
It’s not free. Those receiving Habitat homes put in sweat equity by working on their houses, and they pay a mortgage like everyone else. But Habitat is helping people better themselves, fulfilling the dreams of many who never could have conceived of owning a home.
“It’s a blessing,” said Narda Christian, who, as of the end of this week, will be living in Wellborn Manor. “I’m at a loss for words. It’s overwhelming to see it all coming together.”
Fuller, a native of Lanett and a self-made millionaire who gave up his business career for a more noble pursuit, has brought his dream back home to Alabama with this week’s Jimmy Carter Work Project.
Habitat, which started as a regional effort then grew to national proportions, and then spread around the world, has now landed essentially in Fuller’s back yard.
“It’s a thrill to come back and see Habitat for Humanity take root in my native state,” Fuller said Monday morning as he waited for a press conference with former President Jimmy Carter. “We have a history of some things none of us can be proud of — especially race relations — so it’s prideful to see people here working together.”
Indeed, thousands of volunteers from all parts of the world didn’t slow their work during Fuller’s press conference. Against the background of the shrill saws screaming through lumber and the hammers cascading down on wood, creating a workingman’s drumbeat, the 67-year-old Fuller said Anniston was chosen for this year’s Carter Work Project because it was first.
Anniston’s civic and Habitat leaders, Fuller said, were the first to step up with a date to eliminate substandard housing — 2020 — as part of Habitat’s 21st Century Challenge, a program that endeavors to eliminate such housing this century.
“I believe we are seeing the emergence of a movement,” Fuller said. “I lived to see the birth of the civil rights movement, segregation seemed like it would be there forever, but it was changed. The stigma of discrimination is there, but because of the movement, it changed for the better for all of us. Along comes a mustard-seed idea that says all families should have a decent place to live, so what you see here is part of a growing movement.”
Fuller has plans to move Habitat for Humanity forward over the next few years. For instance, in the organization’s first 26 years, volunteers have built 100,000 homes. Now, Fuller wants to make it 100,000 homes in five years.
Next year’s Jimmy Carter Work Project will be in Mexico. More immediately, Fuller will be in Eastern Europe next week.
There, he’ll dedicate the 100th Habitat house in Klug, Romania. That house also will be the 150,000th Habitat house worldwide.
But Fuller doesn’t measure his success with numbers. He keeps track for the media and others, but to him, he’s trying to help people.
“We’re headed out in this direction, and hopefully, we’re getting there,” Fuller said. “These are our friends and supporters, but as more people get involved the more likely it will be that we’ll get there.”
One measure of Fuller’s impact on the world comes from former President Carter. After accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo last year, Carter was asked whom he would nominate for a Nobel. His answer?
Fuller and wife Linda.
For Fuller’s dream to reach fruition, more effort is required. It’s important for Habitat for Humanity and Jimmy Carter Work Projects to continue to globe-trot to where they’re needed, he said, but sustained campaigns must be waged on the local level after they’ve left.
So now, it’s up to Anniston to fulfill a dream of its own.
“You have to stay at it, that’s what I’ve done for 27 years,” Fuller said. “You just get out there and do it. That’s the challenge Anniston has, is to keep this momentum going.”
