Carson McCullers: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Lula Carson Smith was born on February 19, 1917. She was the oldest of three children. Carson found herself to be very good at playing the piano at a young age. She shocked her mother at age six by sitting down and playing with both hands a song she heard for the first time that afternoon in a movie theater. From then until late high school, she practiced fervently and hoped to carry her work onto a musical education at the New York Julliard School. However, at seventeen, she was told that she had pneumonia and would have many complications. Later, she found out she had rheuma