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AUGUSTA, Maine (WMTW) — Friends and colleagues of Robert Fuller Jr. didn’t know what to think when they first heard news of his death on Tuesday.
“I was just in shock,” said Martha Everatt-Stpierre.
According to the Montgomery County Police Department, officials responded to Cogir Potomac Senior Living around 7:34 a.m. Saturday and found Fuller inside an apartment, unresponsive, with signs of head trauma. Police say he was shot and killed and pronounced dead at the scene.
Everatt-Stpierre met Fuller through his former wife, but ran into him years later when she was trying to get a new non-profit started. She wanted to bring transitional housing to veteran women, something she says had never been done before. Finding money was a challenge, but she says Fuller wrote her a check without having to ask.
“He was the first person with money that really took me seriously,” she said.
With his help, Everatt-Stpierre was able to start the Betsy Ann Ross House of Hope. They found a building in Augusta on Summer Street and used the money to refurbish it.
Charles McGillicuddy also played a role in getting the House of Hope started. He says Fuller never asked for any recognition of his contributions.
“A number of people contributed. Robert Fuller was the major donor. Most of the money came from him,” McGillicuddy said. “There’s no public acknowledgment at all, and he didn’t want to. He didn’t want it known.”
The Betsy Ann Ross House of Hope still exists today under a different name, the Sisters in Arms Center.
“He loved Maine, and he loved veterans. He was a multimillionaire, he didn’t have any children, so he wanted his money to go to bettering the community he lived in and bettering the lives of veterans,” Everatt-Stpierre said.
People who knew Fuller said that when he made donations, it was often done anonymously, so it can be challenging to track his contributions. In 2021, he donated $1.64 million to fund improvements to Cony High School’s Alumni Field complex.
He was also a part of the Winthrop Lions Club, where he met Scott Foster. Foster was organizing a golf tournament when Fuller quietly lent a hand.
“My wife gave me a box, and she’s like, ‘Bob Fuller dropped this off,’ and I looked, and it was a bunch of envelopes that he had done up,” he said. It wasn’t until a year later that he realized just how much he had given. “I added them up, and they were more than $1,000. So that’s when I realized he was just going out and doing this out of his own goodwill.”
Everatt-Stpierre said that Fuller had moved to Maryland to be closer to family but still cared deeply about his ties to Maine.
“I just couldn’t imagine who was going to kill an 87-year-old man — and why?” she said.
“I mean, he did a lot. And it’s nice that he’s getting some recognition for it. And it’s just such a shame,” Foster said. “It shouldn’t happen to an 87-year-old man in senior living.”
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