hearth retailer
Jodie Breece, Ray Duhon, Dorothy Duhon
StellarService Texas retailer does whatever it takes to help customers, from devastating snowstorms to stunning installations.
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WRITTEN BY KIMBERLY RODGERS PHOTOGRAPHY BY SEAN HUNTER/BLACK CREEK PICTURES
he terrible storms that slammed Texas this winter—causing once-in-a-lifetime snow totals, damaging ice, and freezing temperatures—resulted in statewide power outages and boil-water notices. Without heat, thousands of residents relied on their fireplaces to provide warmth and a much-needed cooking source. In one day, Churchill’s Fireside & Patio (Austin, Texas), received over 60 voice mails from people asking for help on how to safely operate their fireplaces. Due to the state’s normally warm temperatures and mild winters, many homeowners had not ever used their fireplaces, and there were many questions on how to operate them during the emergency. The store’s co-owners, Ray Duhon, Dorothy Duhon, and Jodie Breece, were working extremely long
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days during the week of the storms to help as many people as possible. Phone calls were returned well into the evening. “Whether we could help them or not, we wanted people to know we cared,” Dorothy Duhon says. Breece adds, “We were on the phone 12 hours a day instructing people how to start their pilot lights or operate their battery back-ups.” Many people expressed their gratitude and let Churchill’s know their fireplaces saved their lives that week. “It was very rewarding, and we received great joy from helping people—that is really who we are every day,” Breece says. Ray Duhon started in the hearth industry years ago when he began installing gas logs for a nationwide chain of fireplace stores and moved up the ranks to district manager. Eventually, the chain folded and, in 1988,
some investors started a smaller group of Texas-based fireplace stores and asked Ray to run the Austin location—which always had a strong hearth market. Dorothy, who still had another full-time position in retail, worked in the store unpaid on the weekends. She named it Churchill’s Fireside & Patio after the high school she attended in San Antonio. “The owners wanted a classy, British name,” Dorothy says. In 2002, Ray and Dorothy purchased the store. “We always ran the store like we owned it, so when we bought it, we didn’t even have to close the doors,” Dorothy says. From the beginning, Churchill’s was successful with much of the store’s prosperity attributed to Ray, who is renowned for his distinctive gas log set installations. “Ray has a way of making gas fires look very real. There is an art to the stack and he definitely
