Caroline Rose Hunt

Caroline Rose Hunt (born January 8, 1923) is an American heiress, hotelier and philanthropist.

Biography

Early life

Caroline Rose Hunt was born on January 8, 1923, the daughter of H. L. Hunt (1889–1974) and Lyda Bunker (1889–1955). She has six siblings: Margaret Hunt Hill (1915–2007), H. L. Hunt III (1917–2005), Lyda Bunker Hunt (born and died in 1925), Nelson Bunker Hunt (1926–2014), William Herbert Hunt (born 1929), and Lamar Hunt (1932–2006).

She was educated at the Hockaday School, an all-girl boarding school in Dallas. She then attended Mary Baldwin College, a private women's college in Staunton, Virginia for two years, until she transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.

Career

Prior to her first marriage, she worked in her father's Dallas office. She later worked as a sales clerk at the Neiman Marcus department store in Dallas.

In 1979, she opened the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, a luxury hotel in Turtle Creek, Dallas, and founded Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, where she now serves as Honorary Chairman. The company owned the Hotel Bel-Air in Bel Air, Los Angeles in the 1980s, but sold it in 1989. It currently owns the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, among a portfolio of other luxury hotels. It is a subsidiary of a larger company owned by Chinese billionaire Henry Cheng. She was inducted into the North Texas Commercial Association of Realtors Hall of Fame in May 2013.

She has a line of bath and skin products called Lady Primrose.

In 2000, she wrote a novel, Primerose Past: The 1848 Journal of Young Lady Primrose. She has also written two cookbooks.

Because of her hotels and cookbooks, she is a member of the Dallas chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier, a professional organization for women involved in the food, wine, and hospitality industries. Moreover, she was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame in 1999.

Philanthropy

She served on the Board of Trustees of Mary Baldwin College for twenty years. In 1991, together with her sister Margaret, she paid for the restoration of Hilltop, an 1810 building on the campus of Mary Baldwin College which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Additionally, she is a recipient of honorary degrees from Mary Baldwin College and the University of Charleston.

She is a co-Founder, Honorary Vice Chair of and significant donor to the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas Foundation. She received the National Award from the United Way Tocqueville Society. In 2013, she received the J. Erik Jonsson Award from the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.

She is also a donor to the Junior League of Dallas, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Tiffany Circle of the American Red Cross, the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Crystal Charity Ball, the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress, the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Downtown Dallas, the Dallas Opera, the Dallas Symphony, and the Dallas Woman's Club. She has also donated to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. She served on the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. for ten years. She serves as a co-Chair of the Dallas/Fort Worth Committee of the Celebration of Reading organized by the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, founded by former First Lady Barbara Bush. She has also served as Honorary Chair of the Retina Foundation of the Southwest, a non-profit organization for research into macular degeneration and restoration of vision loss. Additionally, she has received the Caroline Rose Hunt rose for donating more than US$10,000 to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden. She also received the Rose Award for her donations to the Dallas Children's Theater in 2013. She is an auxiliary member of the Nexus Recovery Center, a non-profit organization which provides specialized substance abuse services for females in Dallas. Additionally, she received the TACA Silver Cup Award from The Arts Community Alliance in 2012 for her donations. She sits on the Advisory Board of the National Psoriasis Foundation.

She attends the Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, where she served as the first woman deacon. She has also served on the Board of Trustees of the Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas.

Personal life

She has been married twice. Her first husband was Loyd Bowmer Sands, a pilot in the United States Navy. They had five children:

• Laurie Sands Harrison. She married Frank Walls Harrison III.
• David Sands. He married Nancy Goldman Sands.
• Patrick Bryan Sands. He married Sara Faulconer Sands.
• John Bunker Sands. He married Ramona Stark Sands.
• Stephen Sands. He married Marcy Wilson Sands.

After they divorced in 1973, she married a second time, to Buddy Schoellkopf. They later divorced.