VALDOSTA – The man who helped house hundreds of South Georgia residents has passed away.

Stuart Mullis, executive director of the Lowndes County affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, died Tuesday. A service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday, June 30, at Carson McLane Funeral Home.

As executive director for Habitat for Humanity, Mullis changed the direction of many lives but the organization also changed the direction of his life.

After volunteering for the organization one time, he became committed to Habitat. It also led to him becoming the Lowndes County affiliate’s executive director.

He often told a story which he said illustrates why he became an immediate believer in Habitat.

Habitat for Humanity builds houses. Mullis knew that showing up at a site to volunteer. He’d retired from owning the restaurant J.P. Mulldoon’s and had become restless. He wanted something to do. His wife, Claudia, suggested volunteering. He tried Habitat.

On site, the house was mostly built. It neighbored another Habitat house already completed and occupied by a mother and her small children.

Mullis was assigned to lay sod. He pushed the patches of sod by wheelbarrow. It was an August day, baking in the hundred-degree South Georgia heat.

Given the heat and the job, Mullis said he was anything but a Habitat believer based on his first minutes with the organization.

The next-door children came outside to play. Their mother came outside to watch them.

As he worked, Mullis nicked a hand on the wheelbarrow. The cut bled.

One of the neighbor children, a boy, probably a 5-year-old, with two front teeth missing, approached Mullis.

The boy looked at the blood on Mullis’ hand.

“Hey, mister,” Mullis recounted the boy saying, “what happened to your hand?”

Mullis said he’d cut it and playfully asked the boy, “What happened to your teeth?”

The boy replied, “My daddy knocked them out.”

The answer was unexpected and stunned Mullis.

Before he could reply, the boy ran to Mullis who towered over six feet tall. The boy wrapped his arms around Mullis’ legs and said, “Thanks to you for our house, he’ll never do that again.”

“I had nothing to do with building that boy and his family’s house,” Mullis said. “I was on site for the first time. The boy didn’t know that.”

The boy only knew that Habitat had helped give his mom and him a home.

The incident impacted Mullis.

During the build, he learned the Valdosta-Lowndes County Habitat for Humanity needed an executive director. Mullis applied for the job and got it.

Mullis was a big man who could be as generous as his imposing size. But he was also firm with people seeking Habitat help.

People receiving houses must pay. They must make house payments. They must work “sweat equity,” meaning they must put in time to the building of their house or help Habitat.

“I sit people down in this office and I tell them. No pay. No stay,” Mullis said in a past interview. And if they can’t fulfill the sweat equity requirements, they’re not moving into a Habitat house.

Yet, he was regularly inspired by people’s stories, and he often shared the stories that inspired him to hopefully inspire and encourage others to support Habitat.

A man entered the Habitat offices. He said he wanted a house for his disabled wife.

Mullis made it clear the man would have to work. Sweat equity is a requirement for everyone.

The man seemed irritated by the insinuation that he may not be able to work. He said he would fulfill the sweat equity requirement.

Habitat had received a donation of nuts and bolts that could not be sold because they were scrambled in torn and damaged boxes.

The man arrived day after day, standing in the winter cold of the Habitat storage facility, sorting about “a million nuts and bolts by hand.”

The man was blind. He fulfilled his sweat equity. He did what was required so his wife could have a Habitat house.

“I’ll never forget why he said he wanted his wife to have a house,” Mullis said. “He said, ‘Because I love her so.'”