By John Burton
MONMOUTH BEACH – Despite everything he’s gone through, Jim Fuller is grateful.
“I’m grateful I’m alive; I’m grateful for having a close family” who have provided him with a place to live, Fuller said this week, nearly a week after his lifetime home was destroyed by fire, leaving him homeless and losing just about all of his worldly possessions.
Fuller, 58, a quadriplegic who requires the use of a wheelchair, said he’s most appreciative that neither he nor anyone was injured in the blaze and especially “by the outpouring of support” he’s received since then, he said. “It’s just amazing to me.”
Fuller’s home, 13 River Ave., was overcome by flames at approximately 1 a.m. on Jan 28. He had been in his third floor bedroom at the time watching the end of a basketball game. With his disability, if not for his live-in caregiver, Bob Kern, Fuller said he might not have survived the fire.
Nearly a week after the fire, “It looks like the house is a total loss,” said Laurie Escalante Hernandez, Fuller’s niece.
The house – “It was the home I grew up in, my mother grew up in,” said Hernandez, and where Fuller has lived since he was a small child – has been home to family members for 55 years.
“It’s been passed down from generation, to generation,” Fuller said.
Unfortunately, with the mortgage long paid off, Fuller had let the homeowners insurance lapse, leaving him and Kern homeless.
“He’s lost everything he had,” Hernandez said.
Fuller and Kern are now living with Fuller’s sister, Joyce Escalante at her South Road home.
Area residents have come to his assistance, providing some clothing, some furniture and other items. And Hernandez has begun a gofundme.com page – Help Jim Fuller Rebuild – hoping to help her uncle eventually return home.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 166 people have contributed $15,930.
The 3,090 square-foot River Avenue home was built in 1905 and is assessed at $733,600, according to Monmouth County tax records.
Along with the cash donations, “People have been sending really nice messages,” on the website, Hernandez said. Initially after the fire, while Fuller is a “calm, a pretty optimistic guy,” she sensed, “He was not taking it well,” having lost his needed hospital bed and his computer along with his clothing and personal effects.
But the messages “really made all the difference,” Hernandez believed, with Fuller providing personal responses to them.
“It brings tears to my eyes,” as he read the messages, Fuller said.
Fuller was a freshman at Rutgers University in 1974 when he suffered an accident that required three months in the hospital and six months in a rehabilitation facility and leaving him paralyzed. He learned to drive and went to work as the borough chief financial officer and tax collector, retiring in 2012, after 33 years.
“People have been really great,” Hernandez said, noting some are working to get Fuller a new hospital bed and computer. And Fuller said a local contractor offered his services to close off the property with the destroyed home.
There’s still a long way to go and Fuller acknowledged “I try not to think too far in the future,” but he and his family remain hopeful that he’ll be home again.
