Current Issue-Fall 2008

On the cover:
Publicly ousted from the charity he began almost
30 years ago, Habitat for
Humanity founder
Millard Fuller rebuilds his life and dreams,
one house at
a time.
Cover design by Shannon Bryant-Hankes ’84
Photography by Jeff Etheridge

The Pizza Man Cometh
How one burned-out adman learned that living
a minimum-wage life isn’t as easy as it looks
Written by Prioleau Alexander ’70
Feature design by Lizzie Moore
Artwork by Donna Racer
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?

God's Man
The rise, fall and resurrection of Millard Fuller
Written by Suzanne Johnson
Feature design by Shannon Bryant-Hankes
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.
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 fired 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 final time, they
just feel numb...

Great Inspirations
What do these 10 books have in common?
Each sparked an AU professor to respond, “Eureka!”
Feature design by Lizzie Moore
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
first 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 .....
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