James Fuller did not speak until he was 6 years old. He was told he would never amount to anything and that it was foolish for him to even consider going to college. After earning two college degrees and working through a successful career, the 82-year-old is now a published author and spends his time encouraging students who have been told by others that they will never be successful.
Fuller was born in Shiloh, a small community north of Beebe. He said his family does not know why, but he did not speak for the first six years of his life. He said he thinks he had German measles, but there is no way to confirm that suspicion.
“I remember hearing people talking and someone saying, ‘Don’t talk while he’s here.’ Then, the other person would say, ‘He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know. He’s an idiot.’”
Fuller’s uncle, however, knew his nephew was not an idiot, so he decided to make Fuller mad enough to talk. The ploy worked, and after his uncle infuriated him, Fuller uttered his first words, he said.
“I was jabbering, and my mom came in and didn’t understand,” Fuller said. “I hesitated from time to time, but I got it out: ‘The bear’s gonna get Arnold.’”
When Fuller was getting ready to graduate from Beebe High School, he had to see a counselor to get recommendations on what to do after graduation. That is when he was told that it would not be wise for him to go to college.
“He told me my IQ was 80, which was near Down syndrome,” Fuller said. “He recommended I get a job on a farm or at a service station. That was it. It didn’t make me mad, but it made me wonder if I could do better than that. I didn’t follow his recommendation. I went to college.”
Fuller did not get much encouragement from home, either. His father did not want him to go to college, so Fuller went out on his own to hoe cotton and earn the $35 for his first semester’s tuition at Beebe Junior College, now Arkansas State University-Beebe.
“I ended up graduating No. 4 out of 125 students,” he said. “It was determination, but there was something else, too. There was a woman named Margaret Moore — a teacher — who had me believing I could do anything I wanted to.”
After he graduated from Beebe Junior College, Fuller spent a year in California working in a couple of industries. He ended up spending two years in the Army as an atomic-projectile mechanic. Through one of his Army buddies, Fuller met his wife, Louise, in Old Hickory, Tennessee.
“She’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Fuller said.
After he and Louise got married and Fuller was out of the Army, he took his bride back to California for a year to return to the job he had left two years earlier. After that year, the couple decided to make their way back to Tennessee for Fuller to go back to college.
“I arrived at Tennessee Technological University with $40 and a pregnant wife,” he said, “but I made it.
When I got out of college, I graduated No. 66 out of 625 there.”
Fuller immediately got a job with Dun and Bradstreet and was told to keep his expectations low.
“My boss told me that he would hire me, but I should never ask to work as a salesman or manager,” Fuller said. “He said, ‘We’ve taken your tests, and they show you could never be in sales or management.’”
After 3 1/2 years working for the company in Dothan, Alabama, Fuller got a call from his boss to pack everything up and head to Birmingham. When he asked why he had to go to Birmingham, his boss simply told him he was going to be a salesman.
“I said, ‘I can’t sell. Didn’t you read the record?’” Fuller said. “He told me he didn’t care, so I moved to Birmingham. The first seven months, I didn’t make a sale. At the end of 12 months, I had won the national sales contest.”
Fuller said he did not get discouraged during those first seven months. He had a plan to learn the business practices and attitudes of his clientele during that time, and the payoff was worth the few dry months.
He worked in sales for several years, earning some awards along the way, when something happened he still cannot explain. This event has given him direction and purpose, even if he does not understand everything about it, he said.
“On the first Monday morning in May of 1972, I had a vision,” he said. “I don’t understand visions, but I had one. God told me there was something special he wanted me to do. I still don’t know what it is, but the next Monday morning at the exact same time, I called in to the office, and they told me to call Atlanta. I called Atlanta, and they told me to call New York. I called New York, and the man asked me, ‘How would you like to go to Knoxville, Tennessee, to be district manager?’”
Fuller reminded his boss that his record showed he shouldn’t be in management, but his boss didn’t care. The Fullers moved to Knoxville, and every year he was manager, his office came in third in the nation in performance. Unfortunately, inner-office politics led to Fuller’s boss being fired, and since Fuller was in management, he was also let go. In 1983, after he was fired, Fuller moved his family to Cabot for a chance at starting over.
Fuller worked for the Buckeye Gas Co. until it was sold, and that’s when he started substitute teaching in the Cabot Public Schools. Through connections he had made in the community, Fuller was offered a different job in the school system.
“Mr. Hawkins — who is now principal at the high school — called me one night and asked if I’d be interested in coming to work in the schools taking care of a cerebral-palsy boy,” Fuller said. “I took a couple days to think about it and then called him back and ended up taking care of a boy named Clayton at Junior High South. The next year, I took care of a couple of boys.”
One of Fuller’s first students was an eighth-grader named Tim. When they initially met, Tim told Fuller that his job would be easy.
“I’m not mean, and I can’t learn,” Tim told Fuller.
“I started trying everything I could think of to encourage him, but nothing worked,” Fuller said. “Finally, one morning I went to him and said, ‘Tim, I’ve had you investigated by the FBI, and they told me that you can learn.’ It wasn’t true, of course. … He didn’t say much, but I began giving him things starting out with one plus one, and he answered it. By the end of the year, his average in tests was running in the high 70s.”
Fuller continued this work and was a permanent substitute teacher until five years ago, when he was approached to work at the Cabot Learning Academy, an alternative school in the Cabot Public School District.
“Along the way, I got to thinking about it and wanted to find another way to help kids,” he said. “The biggest abuse I see is when people don’t pay attention to their kids. So I decided to write a book.”
Fuller recently had his book, Train Them Up the Way They Should Go, published so that it can be a resource for parents about how to love and encourage their children, even before they are born.
Aside from his work in the schools, Fuller has had a significant impact on the city of Cabot. He has been involved in local politics, being one of the first Republicans in a century on the Cabot City Council, where he served two terms. He is also actively involved at Mount Carmel Baptist Church.
Fuller said the vision he received from God in 1972 still puzzles him. Fuller does not know if it is indicative of things that have happened, things he is doing now or things to come, but he said he trusts God’s plan for his life.
“Maybe one of these days I’ll find out what that vision was all about,” Fuller said.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.