“Fuller’s life story is a parable,” David Waters wrote in a Washington Post tribute to Fuller, who died on Feb. 3 at the age of 74 after a brief illness.
“Millard Fuller was a force of nature who turned a simple idea into an international organization that has helped more than 300,000 families move from deplorable housing into simple, decent homes they helped build and can afford to buy and live in,” Jonathan Reckford, Habitat for Humanity International’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Fuller left Habitat under a cloud when in 2005 a former employee said he had sexually harassed her. Fuller denied the allegations, and although the Habitat board of directors said it was unable to substantiate the charges, he was dismissed.
Fuller, an attorney and businessman, was born in Lanett, Ala. Not yet 30, he was already a wealthy man when he and his wife, Linda, decided to renounce their wealth. They were heavily influenced by the work of the Koinonia Farm, a devout Christian community, in rural Georgia as the example of a “demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God.”
The Fullers eventually took to the idea of neighbors building simple homes for those too poor to afford them. The Fullers brought the idea to Africa and, on their return to the United States in 1976, founded Habitat for Humanity International.
Habitat for Humanity earned praise from supporters such as Jimmy Carter, former U.S. president, a long-time volunteer for the group. He called Fuller, “one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known”. Among his many honors, Fuller was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, in 1996.
After he fell out with the organization he founded, Fuller founded another group, the Fuller Center for Housing in 2005.
In his tribute, Waters noted that Fuller’s work was based in a “theology of Enough,” a belief that God “holds no place for hoarding and greed.”
“There are sufficient resources in the world for the needs of everybody,” Fuller once wrote, “but not enough for the greed of even a significant minority.”
