MOUNT VERNON — “I’m in a new stage now,” said Jean Fulleman, 83, about her senior years. Fulleman, who for decades was active in civil rights, social justice and community issues, is an avid student of this new phase of her life, and is tackling it with commitment and passion.
Clad in lavender and purple and surrounded by books, she said, “I’m very proud to be 83. But it’s like being in a foreign country without a dictionary. I’ve been exploring. I have to design a life here.”
Fulleman was born in Virginia, went to high school in Washington, D.C., and attended American University.
She met John Fulleman, and knew immediately he was the one for her. He was 15 years her senior and a native of Switzerland.
“I saw him ... and I thought, ‘There is my future.’ John was the most versatile person I’ve ever seen. He made all the boys in my life look like nothing. He played the piano, spoke several languages, he was a skier. He could fly before he could drive. He was wonderful,” she said.
The couple lived in Switzerland briefly, where John worked as a design engineer but was looking for a new employer. He had a choice of several around the world.
“John said, ‘But the one I really like is Mount Vernon, Cooper-Bessemer.’ I was glad he’d decided on the United States.”
The couple has three children, as well as adopted and foster children.
“We had 50, 60 ‘drop-ins,’” Fulleman said. “I wanted all kinds of children. I went to the Mount Vernon children’s home and spoke with Helen Warman of Children’s Services, but they didn’t have a program for foster children then.”
But late one night, Warman asked them to take in a 5-month-old baby, Anne Marie, who would live with them until she was 15.
“When she was 33,” said Fulleman, “I said, ‘Would you consider being adopted now?’ Well, she was all excited. So she’s our adopted daughter.”
Settled in Mount Vernon, the Fullemans went church shopping.
“The first place we went was First Congregational,” she said. “Right away, we were in the choir, the Mr. and Mrs. Club, and I was chairwoman of the Christian Education Board. So much to do and we had all these wonderful new friends.”
First Congregational is known as a social justice church, and it wasn’t long before Fulleman adopted that sense of community involvement.
“First Congregational is a very ‘yeasty’ kind of place,” she said. “We boycotted Shell Oil and burned their credit cards because of the way they treated their workers in Africa. I was very concerned about human rights. When I was 3, my parents took me to a historic Baptist church, and the congregation sang, ‘Jesus Loves The Little Children.’ But I noticed that black people came to our back door.”
Fulleman, while in her 40s, heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Mansfield, and that event launched her into serious activism.
“I was carried away with what he said,” she recalled. “I trained in non-violent resistance. You know, how to roll oneself into a ball so they can’t get at your vital organs. We went to Washington in 1964 to lobby for the civil rights bill. We went to Canton, Miss., and walked up and down the streets and persuaded people to come to the courthouse and register to vote. I was followed all the time by a stereotypical southern sheriff with a big white hat and a big cigar.
“In Greenville, Miss., we attended a secret church service out in the woods. People held hands in a big circle and sang ‘We Shall Overcome.’ And Greenville is where we infiltrated the Klan. Students led us into the dark woods where there were a lot of people. The sanctimonious minister preached on Jesus and love and family. Then he ended it with, ‘And be sure to run over any niggers you see on the way home.’
“They passed around a bucket for contributions,” she continued. “Of course, we didn’t want to give them any money, but we also didn’t want them to realize who we were. So one young woman took off her Freedom Now button and dropped it into the bucket. It made a nice clink, so that’s what we all did.”
At that time in her life, Fulleman said, she thought she was just getting started.
“My motivation was what I learned in the church,” she said. “My whole path was directed ... if God wants me to do it, it will be possible. And it always was.”
But that’s not to say it was easy.
“Oh, I did some scary things,” said Fulleman. “I was scared of everything back then, and scared of making speeches, but if my conscience said to, then I did it. And, really, I had a wonderful time.”
Fulleman went to many Vietnam War protest marches in Washington.
“Once when I came home,” she said with a laugh, “Anne looked up and asked, ‘Well, Mommy, did you get the president to turn off the war?’”
Fulleman helped found a daycare at First Congregational that would evolve into the Head Start program. She joined prayer groups and “an ecumenical, existential kind of Bible study.” She helped launch a coffee shop for teenagers, a jail ministry and a Women, Infants and Children program.
“Anything we could think of that seemed to be needed in the community,” she said.
During the ecumenical movement of the 1960s, six local ministers founded the Interchurch Association. In 1969, it evolved into Interchurch Social Services, where Fulleman was a volunteer and board member.
“We were looking for a director,” said Fulleman. “Sister Phillip Maria, who was the director of Mercy Hospital, said I should take the position. Well, whenever anything comes down the pike that has my name on it, I just know it. There’s sort of a click of recognition. So I agreed to try it for six months. I was there 16 years. I never knew what was going to be happening next, but I just did what was needed.”
That led her to an idea to create a domestic violence shelter. She gathered a task force that opened New Directions in 1983 in a small apartment behind her ISS office.
“I think there are two ways you can work in the world,” Fulleman said. “You can make policy, where you see people at meetings but you don’t get very deep into it. Or you can work from the ground up, where you are really involved with people. I decided I would dig in.”
Thus, at age 64, Fulleman enrolled at Otterbein College and finished her degree.
“I spent my first Social Security check on Otterbein,” she said with a smile.
She earned a master’s degree in counseling at The Ohio State University and worked as a counselor at Moundbuilders Guidance Center for 13 years.
“When I was 80, I thought maybe I should retire and see what my next stage was going to be like,” she said.
Fulleman’s history of activism and service makes the physical limitations of age a bit uncomfortable, but she is learning and directing her energies in new ways.
“There’s creativity in just living,” she said. “I realized I didn’t have to get up at 6 a.m. anymore, so I tried sleeping in. I tried slowing down, but all that did was give me more pounds.
“I’m so curious, and my curiosity gets me up every day. I’m very much involved with all kinds of people. There are so many people to be involved with, and they’re all so fascinating. That, and satisfying my curiosity and keeping doctor appointments keeps me busy.”
Fulleman remains an avid reader of books on church history, the Orient, theology, astronomy, physics and cosmology, and mysteries.
“I like mysteries about smart-alecky girl detectives,” she said with a smile.
She enjoys watching movies and especially likes C-SPAN for its on-the-scene drama. Going to church is too difficult now, but she philosophizes that she has been to church about 3,500 times in her life.
“Maybe that will do me,” she said with a chuckle. “I think of this stage of my life as uncharted territory. And I ask, what is the best, the most rewarding thing I can do now?
“And I wonder, is it enough of a vocation just to be a human being?”
