Linda Young Patman, Audrey Young Haak, Ann Carroll Wise, Beverly Marr, Cindy Spoonts Hershorn and Lucinda Cummins. Photo by Carol Toler.
On the first Friday of December each year, it feels like everyone in the neighborhood is visiting the four houses and the vendor market that make up Lake Highlands Women’s League’s Holiday in the Highlands. But it’s not just folks in our community who find their way back to the home tour, year after year.
Audrey Young Haak and Anne Carroll Wise drive up from Austin to view the homes and reunite with fellow alums from Lake Highlands High School. It can be a challenge for their group to make it through the homes, though, because they keep bumping into friends from the early days who want to stop and reminisce.
“We started coming on the tour with our mothers,” recalls Haak, who grew up on Clearhurst with sister Linda Young Patman, also part of the group. “Unfortunately, our mothers don’t get to come with us anymore, but we continue the tradition, and we get to see all our old friends.”
Wise grew up a block away on Cliffmere and says she loves to swing down their old streets and see what has changed — and what hasn’t.
“As we’re driving in the neighborhood, we talk about ‘when so-and-so lived here and there,’ and we remember things we did back in the day. It still has such a great neighborhood feel.”
Though she’s nostalgic for times when she had a school acquaintance on most every block, Wise says she also enjoys seeing what today’s creative owners have been able to pull off.
“I love to see what they’ve done with each of the houses, whether they’ve remodeled or torn down and rebuilt. I love seeing the décor, and it makes it more fun to realize we knew people years ago that lived there.”
Vela Tomba, Felicia Biles and Anne-Marie Lofton. Photo by Carol Toler.
Felicia Biles traveled all the way from Virginia to enjoy Friday’s tour. She never missed the event during her six years living in Lake Highlands and now flies back to wander the homes with friends Vela Tomba and Anne-Marie Lofton.
“I feel like the tour fosters a sense of community,” she says. “It’s like a connective — it makes Lake Highlands feel like a small town.”
Biles says she hasn’t found anything like Holiday in the Highlands in her Virginia neighborhood, and she’s even talked about starting a home tour in her community. She’s awed by the creativity of the LHWL tour’s homeowners, and each year she finds a little something to implement in her own home.
“I always see something unique and say, ‘Oh, I never thought about doing that.’ This year, it was the cowhide around the Christmas tree (at the Gray home on Shadydale). I love the way people use materials in different ways. It’s beautiful, and it’s attainable. The tour inspires me, because you don’t have to have a decorator — it’s beautiful imperfection.”
Trustee Chris Poteet, Supt. Tabitha Branum and other RISD staff tour the homes. Photo by Carol Toler.
Funds from the tour will go to local schools and nonprofit organizations, and college scholarships will be provided for LHHS seniors. Richardson ISD Superintendent Tabitha Branum, attending the event with her district team, expressed her gratitude.
“We absolutely love that this experience is part of the culture of being a part of Lake Highlands. We want to support all of the philanthropic work that goes in, because things that happen as a result of this day are invested in our kids and in our schools.”
Branum says she, too, has picked up a few decorating tips over her years visiting the homes.
“There was a house last year that featured different cutting boards on a wall in their kitchen,” she recalls. “I have replicated that as best I could in my own house.”
Branum says it’s clear that part of the fun is reuniting with friends.
“I think it’s what makes RISD and Lake Highlands so special. It’s not just a community, it’s a family. To see friends who have been friends for so long, or maybe recently become friends, experience this together is everything. It’s what we hope our kids experience in the classroom. To experience that in the community — I think it’s just amazing.”
You may donate to LHWL here. You may check out my photos here.
LHWL’s Stephani Walne, Heather Marburger and Jenny Littlefield.
