Habitat for Humanity pioneer remembers Jimmy Carter's charitable efforts

My instructions were as clear as they were daunting: meet the former president of the United States in the Presidential Suite of New York City’s Waldorf Astoria.

It was early April 1984, and I had just turned 25. I had never been in the presence of anyone close to that stature. And when Jimmy Carter suddenly emerged from his room, flanked by burly Secret Service agents, it was as if someone stuck a vacuum cleaner hose into my mouth and sucked out all the moisture.

Graciously, the former leader of the free world, just three years out of office, put me at ease by thanking me for the invitation and saying he looked forward to seeing the project. We then proceeded to a seemingly unlikely destination: an abandoned six-story building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Why was Carter here, with me?

I was the founding executive director of the New York City affiliate of Habitat for Humanity. The title was far more exalted than the position. Of the small band of volunteers seeking to do an initial Habitat project in New York, I was the most available — a.k.a, unemployed. With the help of neighborhood church crews, we began work on a burned-out building known in its glory days as Mascot Flats at 742 E. Sixth St. in a neighborhood known as Alphabet City. Our treasure chest contained a whopping $10,000. The project would eventually cost more than a million dollars. None of us had experience fundraising at that scale.

Even more daunting: navigating city bureaucracy. And that’s before grappling with the engineering and construction complications of converting a hulking mess of a building into 19 units of housing for poor, hard-working local families — people who would leave Wednesday evening Bible studies and return to apartments with no heat or hot water, with rats biting their infants as they slept on mattresses on the floor.

Today, the Lower East Side is an uber-hip neighborhood to which young New York City newcomers gravitate. But during the 1980s it more readily resembled Beirut or postwar Berlin. Block after block had been arsoned to rubble — at times, by greedy or desperate landlords who filled the bathtubs with bricks so their torched buildings would be sure to collapse, allowing full compensation by their insurers. The area was in the 9th Police Precinct, which had the highest homicide rate in the city. Narcotics were far and away the most lucrative form of local enterprise; on my own block a few streets away, where I lived in a bathtub-in-the-kitchen tenement freely roamed by uninvited members of the animal kingdom, drug dealers sold three different brands of heroin day and night.

In short: a perfect location for Habitat’s first major urban project.

Thirty-eight years ago, few people had ever heard of Habitat for Humanity. But its headquarters in Americus, Ga., was about eight miles from Carter’s home in Plains. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, had expressed interest in helping Habitat. One day, Millard Fuller, Habitat’s charismatic and workaholic founder, visited the Carters in their living room..

“Mr. President, I’m talkin’ to you as a neighbor,” Fuller began in his deep Alabama drawl. “I want you to tell me if you’re interested — or if you’re very interested. If you tell me you’re interested, I’ll be happy with whatever you do. But if, say, you’re very interested … I’m gonna be on your case all the time.”

The Carters exchanged glances and then Jimmy said, “Millard, Rosalynn and I are very interested.”

He added: “And we’re perfectly capable of saying ‘no.’”

Months later, I picked up a copy of the New York Daily News and saw a small item that indicated Carter would be in New York City to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the installation of Greek Archbishop Iakovos, a personal friend. I clipped the story and mailed it to Fuller, noting how splendid it would be if the president could visit our East Sixth Street project. I assumed he wouldn’t.

At worst, Carter would have the opportunity to show himself “perfectly capable of saying ‘no.’”

Shockingly, Carter said “yes.”

So on a Sunday morning in April, I found myself in a sedan driven by Secret Service and sitting in the back seat next to the man who, 39 months before, had been the most powerful human on the planet. On the drive from Park Avenue to East Sixth Street, just 15 minutes but a world away, Carter asked about the pending sale of the city-owned building to Habitat. I told him we were still negotiating the price. Carter, who long had a contentious relationship with New York’s then-Mayor Ed Koch, said, “Maybe I’ll call him and suggest that he increase the price.Then he’ll give it to you.”

We arrived at the building and the Secret Service could not have been less pleased. We were asking the President to climb six stories up a temporary wooden staircase that volunteers had constructed the day before. This was necessary because long before Habitat had arrived on the scene junkies had removed the marble slats in the original staircase. To further gut the building our volunteers had climbed like monkees up what was left of the framing. But we couldn’t ask Jimmy Carter to do that, and his detail would have nixed it even if we had.

That staircase turned out to be pivotal. It allowed us to reach the roof, which itself was full of holes. But as he surveyed the rubbled savannah in the immediate neighborhood the President could see Wall Street and the World Trade Center less than three miles to the south, and the office towers of Midtown Manhattan to the north. Then, peering over the edge of the building into the back lot, he saw an elderly woman cooking her breakfast over an open fire.

He would talk – and write – about that scene for years afterward. (“Here in the richest city in the richest country on earth…”)

Back down on the steps of the building Carter spoke briefly with a handful of press and then walked over to his car to return, much to the relief of his security detail, to Midtown. Turning to me he said, “Rob, Millard Fuller is my boss. If there’s anything I can do to help you here, just let him know.”

Over the years, I’ve been credited for “recruiting” Jimmy Carter for his first Habitat for Humanity work party. It’s a misconception. While Habitat is now a major charity and has drawn at least a few hours of volunteer work by several sitting presidents, the notion then that even a former president would do so was unfathomable.

So I blurted out, “Thank you, Mr. President. Maybe you can send some volunteer carpenters up from your church.”

“We’ll think about it,” he said with a grin.

The next day, Carter called Fuller and said that not only was he going to send some carpenters — he was going to be one of the carpenters.

* * *

Five months later, a chartered Trailways Bus from Georgia rolls up to Metro Baptist Church on West 40th Street, hard by the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen.

On the bus is an animated, if travel-weary crew of volunteers — including Carter. The church, which had sleeping quarters with bunk beds on its upper floors would, for the next week, be home to the first Jimmy Carter Habitat work party.

The Associated Press had reported on the former president’s plans to work on the New York project.. Many other news organizations followed up, initially with queries full of incredulity. The assumption: Carter would show up at the site, engage in a few ceremonial hammer swings — and leave the real work to the Georgia volunteers he had cobbled together. Surely he wouldn’t spend the entire week on the project, sleeping on a church bunk bed at night and arriving early in the morning with everyone else.

But that’s what happened. Each evening, Carter was the last person to leave the work site. The media couldn’t get enough of it. Aside from a few media interviews, all Carter did was eat, sleep and work. Carter’s hammer swings were heard around the world and, just like that, Habitat for Humanity became a household name.

Rob DeRocker launched a career in economic development marketing (www.robderocker.com) after leaving Habitat for Humanity in 1987. He and his wife, Melinda, live in Tarrytown, N.Y., and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands.