People from Carmel

Earl Irvin West (May 18, 1920, Carmel, Indiana – February 4, 2011, Memphis, Tennessee) was a historian of the Restoration Movement. He was known for his multivolume work Search for the Ancient Order, published incrementally from 1949 to 1993. He was baptized by Hugo McCord in 1935. A graduate of Butler University, he received his Ph.D in American History at Indiana University. Although he lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was the minister for two different congregations, he also served for many years as professor of church history at Harding Graduate School of Religion in Memphis, Tennessee, now Harding School of Theology, commuting once a week to Memphis. West founded Religious Book Service.

Avriel Shull (born Avriel Joy Christie; February 9, 1931 – March 6, 1976) was an American architectural designer/builder and interior decorator whose career spanned from the 1950s until her death in 1976. She is best known for her mid-century modern architectural designs, which are especially unusual given the predominantly traditional tastes of mid-century Indiana. Most of Shull's projects were single-family homes around Hamilton and Marion counties in central Indiana, most notably the homes in Christie's Thornhurst Addition in Carmel, Indiana. Shull also designed a number of custom homes in Indianapolis's toniest suburbs, in other Indiana towns, and in other states. In the 1970s Shull began selling house plans in do-it-yourself home building periodicals, which were sold in the United States and Canada. Shull also designed apartment buildings and commercial/industrial properties. Her first major project outside of Indiana was a public library in Elkins, West Virginia. She also did designs for restaurants, including one in California and one in Carmel, Indiana.
Born Avriel Joy Christie in Hamilton County, Indiana, she graduated from Carmel High School and attended Butler University and the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. She left school before completing her degree in 1948 to launch her own commercial art business. In 1951 she married Richard K. Shull, a well-known Indianapolis journalist who became a syndicated columnist and television critic. The couple had two daughters.
Shull, a self-taught artist without a degree in architecture (in fact with no college degree of any sort), devoted her artistic skills to building projects. A female builder/designer was unique for the time, but even more so was Shull's lack of formal architectural training. By 1954 Shull had designed and supervised the construction of her first project, the "Golden Unicorn", a modern-style home in Carmel, Indiana, named after the unicorn installed on an exterior wall. In 1955, Shull began her first large-scale construction project, a new suburban development on a large parcel of land just west of what is now downtown Carmel. Named Christie's Thornhurst Addition, the subdivision is unusual for its large concentration of Shull's strikingly-designed homes. In addition to the design work, Shull supervised construction, laying stone on many of the homes' exteriors herself; coordinated interior design; and assisted in furniture selection. Between 1956 and 1971 Shull designed and built twenty-one houses in Thornhurst.Shull died in 1976 of complications from diabetes. Despite her early death, she left behind a raft of Avriel-designed homes. Christie's Thornhurst Addition was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010 for its mid-century modern architecture and as the work of a master builder. Ladywood Estates was subsequently added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019. The Avriel Shull architectural collection is housed at the Indiana Historical Society. Shull was a member of the National Association of Home Builders and the Builders Association of Greater Indianapolis.

Dorothy Marie Mengering (née Hofert, formerly Letterman; July 18, 1921 – April 11, 2017), better known to Late Night and Late Show viewers as Dave's Mom, was the mother of late-night talk show host David Letterman and frequent telephone and live guest on his show.
She appeared on camera (identified as Dorothy Mengering) on Late Night with David Letterman on the "Parents' Night" broadcast of February 25, 1986, in which the parents of many Late Night staffers were also seen. Following several years of appearing via telephone, Mengering (usually billed as "Dave's Mom" or "Dave's Mom Dorothy", with no mention of her surname) became a recurring on-camera guest on Letterman's subsequent Late Show, initially by covering the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. She lived in Carmel, Indiana, at the time of her death.