Final Salute

WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI – Douglas Fuller built Navy airfields during the Vietnam War, spent his entire career as a road construction contractor and in retirement dedicated himself to public service as a Washtenaw County road commissioner.

Fuller died Saturday, Nov. 26. He was 75.

Even in the months leading up to his death and through a struggle with cancer, Fuller would jump in his car and drive the county to inspect ongoing construction projects, said Wayne Mori, a family friend and resident of Dunkirk, New York.

“I think everybody would tell you at the road commission, that was Doug. He was stickler for perfection,” Mori said.

Fuller, a Scio Township resident, served on the road commission board beginning in 2009 and took the helm as its chair between 2011-20, still serving as a commissioner until his death, according to a notice from the road commission on his passing.

“Doug was a wonderful mentor and coach to me and many others,” Barbara Fuller, current board chair and no relation to Douglas Fuller, said in a statement. “He was truly one-of-a-kind, and we were lucky to have worked with him for as long as we did.”

Fuller is survived by his husband, James Crooks. The two met while Crooks was attending graduate school at the University of Michigan and married in 2015 after 49 years together, said Mori, who grew up with Crooks in Pennsylvania.

“It was true love,” he said, referencing notes of affection he’s found in their home, some a decade old.

Fuller was born in Florida and raised in the Ann Arbor area by his grandparents, Mori said. Service in the U.S. Navy Seabees, its construction battalion, took him throughout the Pacific region erecting airfields and building roads during the Vietnam War.

He carried that into his career in construction in California and Michigan. He grew fascinated with planes, trains, bulldozers and machinery, amassing a collection of thousands of books dealing with them and the public infrastructure they made possible.

The last volume open on his desk? A book on 1958 Nebraska tractors, Mori said.

“He was quite proud of a lot of the jobs he did for the county, like the roundabouts that are starting to appear all over the place. He was very instrumental in that,” Mori said.

So, too, was he important in securing state and federal funds to maintain Washtenaw County’s roads and bridges, also serving statewide infrastructure organizations, the road commission notice states.

Fuller delighted in story-telling, whether you could spare five minutes or an hour, Mori said. Many of those tales centered on European history, particularly that of England and Scotland, where Fuller once lived for six months.

A tramp steamer took him back across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, where Mori and a friend picked him up and drove him to California, entertained by stories of Fuller’s trip.

Public service marked Fuller’s time in Washtenaw County, where he served as a planning commissioner and member of the zoning board of appeals in Scio Township before joining the road commission. He was an active member of the Dexter Rotary Club, Dexter Area Chamber of Commerce and Loch Alpine Sanitary Authority, according to the notice of his death.

Fuller’s death leaves the road commission with a vacancy on its board. The positions are filled through appointment by the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners, according to road commission spokesperson Emily Kizer.

Mori said friends hope to have a night of remembrance at Metzger’s, the German restaurant that was Fuller’s favorite.

He “brought a tremendous amount of passion, character and knowledge to the things he did,” the road commission notice on his death states. “Commissioner Douglas Fuller’s presence is already deeply missed by all who knew him.”