New house captain Ben Diffendal eager to get started in Galax, Virginia
New house captain Ben Diffendal eager to get started in Galax, Virginia
GALAX, Virginia — Leading a Fuller Center for Housing home build—especially a Millard Fuller Legacy Build in which most of the home is completed in a single week—is a challenge. It’s even more of a challenge for a first-time house captain.
And that’s just fine with Ben Diffendal, who will be the house captain for the August 23-28 Legacy Build with the Fuller Center of Greater Carroll County.
“I kind of like the personal challenge,” said the mechanical engineer from Pittsburgh. “At the same time, it was my understanding that no one else could do it at that time, and someone needed to step up, and I was willing to do that. Of course, I’m not good at sitting still anymore. I’ve got to be doing something. I’ve got to be working on something.”
He’s also never been one to back down from a new challenge—including when his uncle Dave Diffendal convinced him to join him in sailing across the Gulf of Mexico. Although, he admits, he had a moment of wondering if he’d stretched himself a little too far. The moment of trepidation was short-lived.
“The first time I saw the land disappear and it just blew all the way around, I went, ‘What did I get myself into?’” he recalled. “Even when I said that, though, a couple hours later, I was like, this isn’t bad. I could do this.
“I was just trying to get out of my comfort zone in general,” he added. “I was told at one point in time you should try to get out of your comfort zone as much as possible. It will help you learn. It will show you what your true limits are. So, any chance I get to take a little step out of my comfort zone, I try to remind myself to do that.”
It was also Uncle Dave who encouraged Ben and another nephew, Eric, to join him at the 2023 Legacy Build in Hillsville, Virginia. They enjoyed the experience so much that they returned for an encore at the 2024 Legacy Build in Hillsville.
“I think it comes back to something (veteran house leader) Jim Tomascak said: You’re building a home, not a house. And especially I think the first time, it’s really impactful to see a house go up. But if you get to come back to a town for the second or third time and you get to see that family again and see what you’ve done and how you’ve impacted them, it really starts to grow on you. And the more you do it, the more you want to do it.”
Ben has been service-minded his entire life. He inherited the hard-working genes of his grandfather—Dave’s father—and honed his leadership skills further as he became an Eagle Scout. His Eagle Scout project was building a boardwalk into a nature area, and he has further developed other construction skills through the years. His most recent Fuller Center project was last year’s Legacy Build in Fitzgerald, Georgia, where his Uncle Dave was the house captain.
Ben’s learned a lot from his uncle, though no one can quite replicate Dave’s ability to fire up a crowd of good-hearted volunteers on a job site. He considers himself “even-keeled,” something he attributes to his engineering background.
“When a problem comes up, my knee-jerk reaction is to take a step back,” he said of his personality on the job site. “How do we solve this? What do we do? Not so much a knee-jerk reaction of, oh my gosh, panic, whatever.”
While Dave won’t be on the job site this year in Galax after already having led two builds this year in Georgia, his leadership from afar has been invaluable as he continues to coach his nephew for the job ahead.
“The first piece of advice I got from him was to build the house in your head every day,” Ben said. “If you build it every single day, by the time you get to the build, you already know what you’re doing and you already know the next step. And then there’s been a lot of pop quizzes throughout the weeks. ‘Hey, if this comes up, what would you do? What would you do here? How do you do this?’ Yeah. I’ve got an ample amount of pop quiz questions.”
Perhaps the most important question, however, is whether he is excited about leading the upcoming build—and his answer is a resoundingly correct “Yes!”
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I’m really excited to see what the week brings.”
We'd love to hear your comments!