Carmen Hooker Odom (born Carmen Anne DeFrates; February 3, 1945), previously known as Carmen Buell, Carmen D. Buell, and Carmen Hooker Buell, is the former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Governor Mike Easley appointed her Secretary in January 2001. Odom, a former Massachusetts legislator and health care lobbyist, has spent her professional life working in health and human services. As a lawmaker, she was the primary legislative author of both the 1991 Massachusetts comprehensive health reform legislation and the Children's Medical Security Plan, which targeted young children not covered by medical insurance.

Early life and career Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and raised in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Hooker Odom is one of two children born to Carmen (née Ingersoll) and Dr. Joseph DeFrates. She attended Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and Springfield College in Massachusetts. Graduating in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in sociology and political science, Odom would receive her master's degree in regional planning from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1984.

With the groundwork thus laid, Mrs. Buell's career in public service began in earnest the following year with her election to the first of six consecutive two-year terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives,Stobbe, op. cit., p. 2E. "She spent 11 years in the Massachusetts legislature, [eventually] chairing the House Health Care Committee." the final three of which were spent as Chair of the House Health Care Committee.

Prior to her appointment as head of the large state bureaucracy, she served as Vice President of Government Relations for Quintiles Transnational Corporation in Research Triangle Park. Odom served as the Group Vice President for Carolinas Healthcare System, now Atrium Health. She is also an adjunct professor at the UNC School of Public Health.

In May 2007, Hooker Odom announced that she would resign as Secretary to become president of the Milbank Memorial Fund. In March 2013 she stepped down as President of the fund, she then became advisor to the President. She served in that role from March 2013 to 2014. She is now a self employed independent consultant.

Personal life On June 25, 1966, almost directly on the heels of their graduation from Springfield College, Carmen Anne LeFrates and Lawrence Highland Buell—simultaneously fellow alumni and fellow honorees in that year's Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities—were married at a small, friends-and-family-members-only ceremony conducted at The Narberth Methodist Church in Narberth, Pennsylvania. Ending via divorce in 1989, the marriage produced two children (in 1967 and 1971, respectively), both girls.

Buell's December 1993 marriage to University of Massachusetts President Michael Hooker marked the culmination of a courtship that had begun that January when the couple first met at a UMass basketball game. The ceremony, conducted at Leyden's United Methodist Church, was, in Hooker's words, "very unconventional" and featured a rendition of "Greensleeves", as given by his then 12-year-old daughter, Alex. In 1995, Hooker Buell accompanied her husband to North Carolina when he was named Chancellor of that state's Chapel Hill-hosted flagship school.

In 1999, the one-time divorcée became a widow when Hooker, aged 53, died following a 6-month-long battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

The seed was planted for marriage number three in January 2001, when, while attending the inauguration of North Carolina governor Mike Easley, Hooker Buell encountered an old, primarily work-related acquaintance, former state senator T. L. "Fountain" Odom. The relationship grew tentatively at first, with the attraction somewhat one-sided, as Odom himself later acknowledged. But eventually she did, as he put it, "get used to the idea" and so, on January 19, 2002, the former Carmen DeFrates finally acquired the name, Carmen Hooker Odom, by which she has since become best known.Stobbe, op. cit., p. 2E. "Last year, at Easley's inauguration, she ran into state Sen. Fountain Odom, 63, a Mecklenburg Democrat and UNC alum whom she had known as a chancellor's wife and as a lobbyist for Carolinas HealthCare. Odom lost his wife of 39 years to cancer in 1999, the same year Hooker died. Odom and Hooker asked each other how they were doing and agreed to have a drink. By late spring, they were dating. By September, Odom knew he wanted to marry her. 'It took a little while for her to get used to the idea,' he said, laughing. Their Jan. 19 marriage led to changes in her life, ranging from what she calls herself to where she lives."

On November 28, 2023, Hooker Odom was widowed once again when her husband, aged 85, "passed away peacefully [...] after a lengthy illness". As of that date, both Hooker Odom and each of her two daughters continued to reside in North Carolina, albeit each in a different city.

See also 1991–1992 Massachusetts legislature Milbank Memorial Fund

References

External links

Odom's Connecticut DPH Profile Odom's Facebook Page Article on Odom's term as NC HHS head