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During Millard Fuller’s visit to Smyth County, he, who once worked closely with Habitat for Humanity and Jimmy Carter, will join a ground breaking ceremony for a home to benefit the family of Gregory Pennington who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

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Fuller’s visit helps kick-off new home project

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Millard Fuller, the founder and former president of Habitat for Humanity who in 2005 started the similar charitable home-building Fuller Center for Housing, will visit Marion Feb. 22-24.
“He will be arriving the evening of the 22nd of February and will be lodged in the General Francis Marion Hotel,” said Bill Baldwin, a long-time builder of homes under Habitat’s program of affordable and no-cost housing built for needy recipients who provide “sweat equity” in the construction of their new homes and others.
On Saturday, Feb. 23, Fuller will be available to the media and will hold a book signing in the hotel lobby. After lunch his entourage will travel to Konnarock for a ground-breaking ceremony at the site of a home to be built by the Fuller Center and local volunteers.
That house will be built for the family of Sgt. Gregory Pennington, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. In the event of inclement weather the ceremony will move to the Konnarock Green Cove/Laurel Valley Community Center, where a reception will follow, according to Baldwin. 
At 6 p.m. a fund-raising dinner will be catered at the Marion Senior High School cafeteria. Reservations are required. Tickets are $15 and may be purchased from local Fuller Center affiliate board members or at Dan Surface’s State Farm Insurance Office, North Main St., Marion.
At 7:30 p.m. a program with Fuller delivering the keynote address will begin in the MSHS Auditorium.
On Sunday, Feb. 24, at 11 a.m., Fuller will deliver the sermon at the Marion Baptist Church before returning to Americus, Ga.
Fuller’s arrival marks the dissolution over the winter of the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate’s ties to that organization and its new association with the Fuller Center.
Baldwin sited the local group’s dissatisfaction with Habitat’s shift in direction. “Too corporate,” Baldwin said of Habitat that now requires local affiliates to meet house building quotas.
“Three houses in three years,” Baldwin said. “There’s no way for a small affiliate like us to do that.” Baldwin said he feels quotas are inappropriate for volunteer, charitable organizations.
According to the New York Times, Fuller and his wife, Linda were both fired from their Habitat positions over an accusation of sexual harassment by Millard Fuller toward a female staff member, a charge the Fullers and their supporters strongly deny.
No legal charges were placed in the matter and the Habitat board wrote in a statement that there was “insufficient proof of inappropriate conduct,” according to the Times’ Aug. 5, 2005 story by Stephanie Strom.
A lie detector test to which Fuller voluntarily submitted “indicated he was truthful in denying any wrongdoing with his accuser,” wrote Bettie B. Youngs, Ph.D, in her book, The House that Love Built: The Story of Millard & Linda Fuller, Founders of Habitat for Humanity and The Fuller Center for Housing (Hampton Roads Publishing Co., Inc., 2007).
Fuller and his supporters said his ouster was the result of his disagreement with the new corporate and secular direction Habitat’s board was taking, according to the Times and to Youngs.
Officially retiring from Habitat, Fuller, with the support of former large contributors to Habitat, established the Christian philosophy-oriented Fuller Center.