Citizen of the Universe The Transformation of Bucky Fuller

Until he was four years old, little cross-eyed Bucky Fuller saw the world as a blur of shapes and colors; he didn't even know what the members of his own family looked like. When he got his first pair of glasses, the sight of the world struck him with the force of a revelation. "For the first time," he said, "I saw leaves on a tree, small birds ... the stars and the shapes of clouds and people's faces. It was a time of utter joy, as though all these things had been newly created just for me. I was filled with wonder at the beauty of the world."

When Bucky was thirteen, his father died after a series of strokes. The resulting family crises catapulted him out of the magical realm of childhood into a harsher, more troubled world in which he often felt awkward and isolated.

Years later, through family connections, Bucky was accepted into Harvard University, where his quirky personality made him an outsider; a sense of alienation tormented this sensitive youth and brought out his reckless side. That first year, as midterm approached, Bucky impulsively withdrew the funds his mother had saved for his education, went to New York City, lodged in one of its finest hotels, and attended the Ziegfeld Follies. Captivated by the show's star, he returned the next night, sent roses and five bottles of champagne backstage, and, in a grand self-destructive gesture, took the entire cast out for a party at one of New York's finest restaurants. In one evening he squandered his entire college fund and ran up a bill it would take his family years to pay.

In the aftermath, Harvard expelled Bucky for irresponsible conduct and his mother sent him to work as an apprentice mechanic in a Connecticut textile mill. A blessing in disguise, this stimulated in Bucky a natural aptitude for mechanical engineering. He threw himself into his work with a passion, sketching his ideas and designing new mechanical pieces for textile machinery. He received glowing work reports and was eventually allowed to return home, rehabilitated in his family's eyes.

At twenty, Bucky met Anne Hewlett, the young woman he would marry in 1917 and love until the day he died. When World War I began, he joined the Navy and patrolled the New England coast searching for German U-boats. Though still a bit odd and erratic, Bucky was a bright, likable young man with a zest for life and a creative knack for inventing "contraptions."

When the war ended, Bucky returned home to his beloved Anne and their infant daughter, Alexandra. By that time Alexandra had suffered bouts of polio and spinal meningitis that left her partially paralyzed. To help cover the extra expenses, Bucky found a high-paying job. But three months after he had begun, the company shut down, leaving him penniless and unable to find decent work. Everything seemed to go wrong after that. At twenty-seven Bucky began to look and feel like a failure. He'd never been a drinker, but now he became one.

In the midst of this difficult period, to distract himself from a chronic depression, Bucky decided to attend a Yale-Harvard football game with some old college chums. Before leaving home, Bucky, Anne, and Alexandra took a walk in the fresh air. Seeing her father's cane, which he used due to an old knee injury, Alexandra asked, "Daddy, when you come home, will you bring me a cane?" He promised he would.

To Bucky's delight, Harvard won the game, and he spent the night drinking and celebrating. The next day he phoned home from Pennsylvania Station to find Anne distraught. Their beloved Alexandra had caught pneumonia and now lay in a coma. She was still unconscious when Bucky arrived. She awoke only once, looked up at him, and asked, "Daddy, did you bring me my cane?"

Bucky turned away in agony and shame, unable to meet his daughter's eyes — he'd forgotten all about his promise. Alexandra died that night in his arms.

Forty years later, Bucky still couldn't speak of this incident without weeping. It would haunt him for the rest of his life. Bucky was devastated, driven nearly out of his mind with guilt and grief, and stricken by his loss, his inability to provide for his family, his self-centered nature, and his failures.

That same season, Anne's mother, one of her brothers, and her brother-in-law also died. Bucky called it "a winter of horror." To escape his personal and financial abyss, he started a company designing and building construction machinery. Each day after work he came home and drank long into the night.

After five difficult years, with the nation moving toward the Great Depression of the 1930s, Bucky and Anne had another daughter, named Alegra. Bucky's struggling company was bought out by a large corporation; he became an employee, and was fired. Once again, he became a...