No Place Like Home
It’s fitting that Carrie Louis Hulburd is chairing the Authors Luncheon. Her life has had its own twists and turns, worthy of an engaging novel.
When the time came for Carrie Louis to launch herself into the real world, she wanted out of Arizona.
That made sense. She had lived in the Arcadia area in Phoenix from the time her family moved to the Valley from Chicago when she was just 2. Her grandparents, whose primary residence was in Chicago, had built a winter home in Arcadia on 25 acres of orange grove in 1938. When her parents decided to move to the Valley as well, they built a home on the lot next door.
Even though she wanted to leave, Carrie has great memories of growing up in the Valley and stories to share about the way it was then. Her family boarded horses somewhere Carrie recalls as being a long way away – perhaps because she was anxious to get there and play polo – but was probably somewhere along Shea Boulevard. After their game, she and friends would ride to Mag’s Ham Bun for a sandwich.
Carrie went to Phoenix Country Day School and then to Arcadia High School. So Colorado College in Colorado Springs sounded just right. And it was.
There, she met the person she would eventually marry, Jon Hulburd. After graduation, she returned to the Valley and enrolled in Thunderbird. But then she was off again – this time about as far as she could go and still be in the continental U.S. She went to work for an advertising agency in New York City.
Jon was attending law school at New York Law School. They married. Their first child was born. Jon didn’t want to practice law in NYC, and it was his idea to come back to Arizona.
A condition of the move, for Carrie, was that they not live in Arcadia. “I didn’t want to drive the same streets and shop at the same Safeway.”
After the move, they lived in a north central Phoenix neighborhood for about three years. The neighborhood was lovely, but the home wasn’t quite what Carrie wanted. Carrie’s grandparents had passed on, and her parents had downsized to a home in Clearwater Hills. That left the two Arcadia homes empty.
Carrie's grandmother enjoys a hammock from the same location where Carrie sits in the photo above.
And here is the irony: The young girl who wanted to live anywhere but Arizona, moved her family into the home she grew up next to: her grandparents’ home. And she and Jon have never left it. “And now I’m back shopping at Safeway,” she laughs.
The entrance as it was in the 1940s and as it is today.
First they added air-conditioning. Then they added a master bathroom and remodeled the kitchen. And moved in. That was it. They and their family, which eventually grew to five children, enjoy the home for all its warmth and charm.
“It’s a beautiful house,” Carrie says. “It’s used-brick inside and out, and every ceiling is wood, every floor is wood.
“Gram’s is a warm house that has a soul. Growing up? I never thought this is what would happen. I wanted to get out of Phoenix.”
Jules, Jon, Chico, Louis, Jacque, Carrie and Sidney Hulburd
That was years ago, and the community Carrie so wanted to leave, she now embraces as her own – and the perfect place for her and Jon to raise their three daughters and two sons.
Like her parents, Julie and Dr. Herbert (Tim) Louis, who have made significant medical and financial contributions to the Phoenix medical community, especially Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Carrie finds ways to give back. This year, she chairs the 32nd annual Authors Luncheon, sponsored by the Women’s Board of the Arizona Kidney Foundation.
Lee Woodruff, emcee for the Authors Luncheon
The host for the November 12 event is Lee Woodruff, co-author with her husband, Bob Woodruff, of “In An Instant: A Family’s Journey of Love and Healing.” The book chronicles the couple’s devotion to each other, especially after Bob Woodruff suffered traumatic brain injury when the tank he was riding in as a journalist in Iraq was hit by an explosive device.
The Hulburds count the Woodruffs among their close friends. “It’s a funny story how we met,” Carrie says.
A couple of years after the Hulburds moved back to the Valley, friends of Carrie’s parents invited them over to meet a couple who had just moved into town. “My husband, Jon, and Lee’s husband, Bob, kept staring at each other, trying to figure out how they knew each other,” Carrie recalls. “It turned out that, though they didn’t attend the same law school, they had been in the same summer associate program during their second year.”
The authors committee for the luncheon has put together a list of authors that promises an engaging afternoon for attendees. In addition to Woodruff, authors include Catherine Coulter, Alice Hoffman, Anthony Horowitz, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Jacques Pepin and Calvin Trillin.
– C.Miller
Read about 10 popular Arizona authors, including Erma Bombeck, founder of the Authors Luncheon.
