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Poor Choices Now His Teaching Tools
Commissioner, Cancer Survivor Fights For Smoking Ban in Charles
By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 1, 2005; Page B01
Robert J. Fuller says he should
have died years ago.
He fought fires in Prince George's
County for two decades and survived two liver transplants. His bald
spot is bandaged and flecked with skin cancer scars. Two years ago,
he lost his voice to throat cancer.
But an artificial larynx has not
stopped the hard-nosed, sometimes profane, Charles County
commissioner from speaking up. Before he retires from the board next
year, the 62-year-old plans to take on what once was Southern
Maryland's premier cash crop.
Fuller wants to ban smoking in the
restaurants and taverns of a region that produced about 80 percent
of the state's tobacco.
"God wants me to help stop others
from making the same mistakes," Fuller said, in the robotic voice of
a vibrating device that has replaced his own.
"Why else would I still be here?"
Seven states and 182 localities,
including California, New York, Delaware and Montgomery County,
insist on smoke-free bars and restaurants. The D.C. Council has been
debating a smoking ban, with a vote expected in the fall.
Charles County has taken tentative
steps in that direction. Commissioners banned smoking last year in
county parks within 100 yards of "organized activities." That means
it's off-limits near softball games but not on the county golf
course.
Fuller's attempt last year at a
comprehensive ban fizzled in the face of opposition from
commissioners concerned about the viability of bars and charitable
organizations that allow smoking during fundraising bingo games.
But as Fuller prepares to leave
office after 15 years, his crusade has become more personal -- and
urgent.
The Prince George's native was a
chain-smoking, beer-drinking firefighter who spent hours swapping
stories and listening to Glenn Miller on the jukebox at the Friendly
Inn tavern in Tuxedo. Then, the hard-charging union president with a
ruddy complexion and receding hairline chased adversity.
"I took my men through hell and
nothing slowed me down," Fuller said. He won the department's
highest honor for pulling a truck driver from an overturned tanker
that had spilled 8,000 gallons of gas on Route 50 during rush hour.
"We should have kept everyone back
and let everything blow, but that's not my nature."
Four years ago, Fuller was forced
to slow down. Doctors gave him 18 months to live unless he got a new
liver. He quit smoking, quit drinking and waited.
The first new liver quit an hour
after his transplant. Fuller was kept alive from a Thursday to a
Sunday until doctors came up with a new liver from an 18-year-old
woman killed in a car accident. This time, Fuller did not wake up
for 47 days.
When he emerged from a coma and
returned to Waldorf with his wife, Lucille, Fuller said everyone
called him "the miracle." Only two years later, he was diagnosed
with throat cancer.
Fuller now breathes through a hole
in his neck. He has lost his sense of smell and taste and most of
his facial hair because of radiation treatments.
What he has not lost is his blunt
style. Standing before a health class last week for Charles County
teenagers caught smoking, Fuller warned, "If you don't quit, you'll
end up like me with this stupid, damn thing held up to your neck and
people can hardly understand you.''
Fuller says he inherited his
boldness from his mother, who was a single mom working in the
Washington Navy Yard when he was born during World War II. Early on,
Fuller attended Catholic schools. He served as an altar boy and
briefly considered becoming a priest. When he became ill, religion
took on new meaning.
"I owe God something for all he's
done for me," he said.
As a school board member in the
1980s and later a commissioner, Fuller relied on the same mix of
humor and unflinching advocacy he used as a union chief to negotiate
on behalf of 450 rank-and-file members.
"He had the nerve to do what needed
to be done" and "an ability to upset the status quo, but everyone
still liked him," said retired Prince George's division commander Ed
Chaney, who also was Fuller's classmate at Bladensburg High School.
Fuller plans to introduce a
comprehensive smoking ban next month, arguing that it is unfair to
subject the public to secondhand smoke. The Democrat's unlikely ally
could be an outspoken Republican colleague, Al Smith, with whom he
has clashed.
During a televised public meeting
in April, for instance, Fuller slipped into profanity in telling
commissioner Smith he erred in proposing a property tax break for
seniors that would not have included an income requirement.
Not to worry, Smith said in an
interview last week. He admires Fuller for being "an old salt from
the good old days. He's not a guy that puts his little finger up and
tests which way the wind is blowing."
Smith said Fuller can count on him
to support a smoking ban for restaurants, but he believes the county
is not ready for a sweeping policy that would include bars.
"It's a change in the way of life,
a change in the culture, a change in our history and I think people
are seeing it," Smith said. "I want to take it a step at a time."
State Sen. Thomas M. Middleton
(D-Charles), who voted against a statewide ban proposed in
Annapolis, echoed those concerns. A former Charles County Commission
president, Middleton said such a ban could be even more difficult to
pass at the local level, where business owners could argue that
customers would flee to a county that allows smoking.
Still, Middleton is not counting
Fuller out.
"Given his health condition and
given that he's leaving, I think the board will be sensitive to
that," he said. "Its chances are the best it will ever be."
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