Early Life

Early Life (1)

2011-01-23T03:04:20-07:00

EARLY HUGHES LIFE IN AMERICA

I was born on a kitchen table in Englewood, Colorado on May 18^th, 1928. Named David Ralph Hughes after my father. But I was called for years ‘Sonny’ and then in school ‘D. Ralph.’ Only after I went to West Point with a military career was I routinely and thereafter called Dave or ‘David.’

From the beginning when my father was born on the Hughes Ranch in 1898, he was always called ‘Ralph’ rather than David. And his father was Eben, not a David. Which David name came to him, then me, and my first born, down through our Welsh family name because we were descended from a long line of noted Welsh Calvinist Methodist ministers. Dating back at least to Reverend Dafydd ap Hugh (David, son of Hugh) in 1588 in Llandefriog, Wales. Which meant I was actually at birth, David Ralph Hughes the Eleventh (XI).

Reverend (Y Parch) Richard Hughes 1825-1898

While I will trace that proud, if not richly endowed, Hughes lineage back into Wales to 1588 in other chapters, suffice it to say for now that my Great Grandfather Reverend Richard Hughes with wife Sarah Rees after 22 years ministering to the faithful in Southern Wales immigrated to America, sailing on the steamer ‘Idaho’ from Swansea, Wales in 1870 with nine children. My grandfather Eben was 2 when they arrived.

All nine children of Sarah and Richard Hughes, are pictured, before they sailed for America from Swansea, Wales, in 1870. Eben Hughes, my grandfather, the youngest, is on his mother's lap.

At first they settled in Le Sueur, Minnesota, where Richard bought a 100 acre farm from the money his congregations in Wales generously saw him off with. Ministers from smaller places both in Wales and America could not support themselves and their families only from their church income, so routinely they tilled the land too. With his eldest sons William, David, Richard John plowing and putting in the crop. Reverend Hughes, thrilled by the “Great West,” the reasonable returns from their farm, and from what he felt was an excellent educational system, happily pursued his pastorate while raising his family. But the very cold Minnesota weather was so hard on his wife Sarah, after 4 years her physician recommended they move to a place with milder climate.

Fortuitously he got the call May 1874 from the Welsh C.M. Church of Long Creek, six miles west of Columbus City, Iowa which needed a minister. There and around Cotter, Iowa he farmed, preached, traveled the western states, affectionately becoming known as the ‘Bishop of the West’ to his death in 1898 while on a trip to see his son Eben, “on the Great Divide” (actually referring to the Palmer Divide that splits the Arkansas from the Platte riversheds) in Colorado. It was within that hard working, large family with devout-beliefs Iowan congregation, where young Eben grew up.

Copy of Original Invitation to Celebration

The last tribute to Reverend Richard Hughes was given on the occasion of their 50th Wedding Anniversary by both the congregation and his family in 1897 near Cotter, Iowa. They were Memorialized by a 1902 book - in Welsh and English, tracing their lives and Richard's Welsh Calvinist Methodist lineage back to at least 1588.

Eben and Ellen Hughes - My Grandfather and Grandmother's - Life

While most of the other 7 children of Richard and Sarah remained in the midwest, (the 8th one, Richard John, died after being kicked by a horse) young Eben left Iowa to ‘go West’ in 1888 when he was 21.

He first lived in Omaha, Nebraska as a student, in 1889. I think he lived with a Welsh family there, for it it was also where he met Ellen Jones.

My grandmother Ellen immigrated from Northern Wales in 1888 at 24 years of age with 16 year old Annie Jones who accompanied, her after her brother, William Jones had preceded both of them.

Here is a rare photo taken of William, Annie and Ellen, soon after they all were together in America. They sent that picture taken in Mankato, Minnesota to send it back to their family in Anglesey.

And a seperate photo of William, probably when he was still in Wales. He looks a little younger.

William Jones

William Jones, Ellen's brother from Wales as a younger man, who immigrated in the early 1880s to America for reasons that legally he would never inherit his deceased father's farm, and the family didn't think he wanted to farm so left Wales before 1883. He was always referred to as 'Uncle Will', lived and worked in Denver with his carpenter skill. He never married. Was remembered in family lore for first visiting the Hughes Ranch almost 40 miles southeast of Denver by bicycle - over those dirt rural roads!

He invested with Eben in one section of the Hughes ranch in 1912.

Ellen had what her later family thought was TB. From Omaha, Nebraska, she wrote to the executor of the estate who was sending her stipends from what her father left her, that she was getting sicker, but saw a doctor and she was on her way to Colorado. For one reputed 'cure' for TB was to live at a high-dry altitude, which Colorado offered in spades.

She first met Eben Hughes there in Omaha and departed for Colorado from Council Bluffs. They both headed seperately for Denver, Ellen with Annie. (In the end, Ellen, living the rest of her life in Colorado was ‘cured’ of whatever ailed her by Colorado air, and lived until she was almost 90.)

They arrived in Denver, and contacted other Welsh immigrants who had become part of a growing Welsh community some of whose families lived in downtown Denver. Eben took a room in the 'Hughes' Building (no blood relation) in the 1500 block of Stout Street. Ellen and Annie had a room in another building close by. Eben fell in love with Ellen and they married in June, 1891. They first lived in rented room #5 in the Root Building at 2411 15^th Street, in downtown Denver. That building is still standing and still known as the historic Root Building on the National Register. Eben first got a job as plasterer.

Root Building 2007

Ellen worked with her Aunt Annie Jones as a dressmaker who also lived in the Root Building as did Ellen's brother William Jones. He had employment as a carpenter.

Their first born was Leila Eva Hughes, born October 11, 1892. No physician attended according to the records. By her birth they had moved to 3534 Marion Street, Denver. It was obvious that Colorado improved her health from the time she wrote back to Wales from Council Bluff's that she was getting sicker, to getting married and bearing her first child within a year.

Edward William Hughes was born to Eben and Ellen in 1893. By then they lived at 560 South Water Street – near the Platte River. Eben also worked for a time for Union Pacific RR, and at the Stockyards that were not far from where they lived. Which work with livestock probably helped prepare him for his plans to homestead a ranch.

Walter Richard Hughes was born in 1894 while they lived at 656 South High Street where Eben was listed as a Dairyman. He worked 10 acres of land, grew and sold produce as well as milk. That would have been on the outskirt fringe of south Denver where small farms could be.

Here is a 9 Minute video showing where, in Denver, Colorado, my grandfather Eben and grandmother Ellen lived from when they were first married and the current addresses (different buildings in most cases) after they were married, and gave birth to Leila, Edward, and Walter - before they Homesteaded in Elbert County in 1898 (where my father David Ralph and Mary were born)

At the end of the tape are three places I lived in the 1940s, also in Denver.

Just click on 'Earliest Hughes Colorado Homes'

Hughes Family Leaving Denver for Good

Between 1895 and 1897 Eben was obviously looking for an homesteading opportunity. He did not appear in Denver telephone directories in 1896 or 7. The growing family apparently had moved to Elbert County, at least 40 miles from Denver in 1896 or 7 where he found the land was that they would claim as a homestead by 1898 and turned into a cattle ranch.

The last two of five Eben-Ellen Hughes children, including my father and Mary, were born on the ranch. It was while the Ranch House was being constructed they lived in a ‘soddy’ – sunken rooms covered over with timbers and sod from the fields. My father David Ralph was born in that soddy, September 13th 1898. Its precise location, just off the 1 mile dirt road – wagon track actually - from the Ranch House to the gate at the county road, is still findable with reference to large old Cottonwood trees that sprung up there some in the sunken ground, surrounded by empty plains.

Below is close to the spot, according to my aunt Leila Hughes who pointed it out to me when I visited the ranch when I was a boy in the 1930s.

Mary, the last born of Eben and Ellen was born in the ranchhouse.

In the photograph Rebecca Hughes Clark, my daughter stands nearby in this 2005 photograph, while grandsons Justin and David (sons of Rebecca's brother, my son Ed) stand right at the sunken ground where the dugout was alledged to be. It's a half mile from the farmhouse they were building.

Where the Dugout was on the Hughes Ranch where my Father was born.

You may comment or ask questions on any of these topics by registering on the home page, logging in and then go to 'Discussion Forums.

Early Life (2)

2011-01-23T23:26:18-07:00

EARLY HUGHES FAMILY AND RANCH LIFE

The main chapters of the Hughes Family in Colorado really started after Eben and Ellen Hughes homesteaded their ranch in 1898, raised a fine family, and lived there until the ranch was sold in 1940.

Homestead Location

The Hughes ranch could be reached by driving 4.7 miles east of Kiowa (which is east of Castle Rock and Elizabeth) on Colorado 86 across Comanche Creek, and then 10 miles north on County 61-69 Road parallel to the Creek to our gate with its cattle guard and mailbox right at the intersection of County roads 61-69 and 166. Below is a rough map (but from Elbert County official records) of the original 1898 homestead (#1) below to the last, 1940, acquisition (#9) of Hughes Ranch Property.

The Hughes Ranch as it started with the Homestead (1) 1898 through the last acquisition in 1940 (9) 3,000 total acres

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The Comanche Creek flows south from the divide between the Platte River - to the north of the ranch - and the Arkansas River basin to the south. Comanche Creek was named after the Comanche Indian Tribes who ruled the plains when only Spanish explorers ranged, up until the 1770s, when Juan Batiste de Anza, Governor of New Mexico, decisivly defeated them south of Pueblo in 1778 at the battle of Greenhorn.

Then the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes filled the vacuum and tried to rule the plains of what became Kansas and Colorado Territories right through the start of the Gold Rush of 1858. But the Indians committed so many depredations of isolated settlers and their homesteads (such as the Hungate family Massacre) - and more importantly they had by 1863 so effectively halted covered and freight wagon travel to Denver, Colorado City and even Pueblo and Canon City - that there was a desperate effort in 1864 - ordered by both the Territorial Governor and Federal Army General Price in Kansas, for Colonel John Chivington to undertake the Battle of Sand Creek in Southeastern Colorado to punish and deter the marauding Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes from more depredations and settler killings.

Some superficially call that engagement the 'Sand Creek Massacre.' Though I - for 30 years a student of the Indian Wars in Colorado Territory that my Colorado schools never taught me - know that with 24 soldiers killed and 52 wounded the myth that only Indian women and children were helpless victims of the planned attack was totally false. It was a two sided battle in which the damage done to the Indians was richly deserved.

Those whose only knowledge of Colorado History starts with the founding of Colorado Springs in 1871, had no relatives killed by those tribes or ranches destroyed have no idea the threat and fear by settlers of the hostile Indian tribes and their actions.

Nevertheless the intended deterrence of further attacks in 1864 did not work that well. For 30 years before the Hughes homesteaded right next to Comanche Creek - in 1868 and 3 years after Sand Creek - a tribe of Arapahoe Indians ran down, killed, and mutilated Henrietta Dietemann and her 5 year old son close to where the Hughes family homesteaded. It was called the 1868 Dietemann Massacre that was part of the Indian Wars that afflicted early Colorado Territory. A monument was erected and still stands in Kiowa, Colorado, the closest town to our Elbert County ranch. Here it is.

The List of Indian Massacres in Elbert County

Young Justin Hughes and David XIII, great grandsons of the Hughes ranch settlers, on a 2005 trip to the Ranch to teach them about their ancestors. Their Aunt Rebecca, my daughter, was with us too on that trip.

As our cattle ranch grew, Eben Hughes was able to buy one section of land (1 square mile of 640 acres) right on the same Comanche Creek in 1917, from a surviving relative of Henrietta Dietemann.

Life on the Ranch

Our ranch with its Lazy O/T cattle brand became a family icon. For not only was it successful as a cattle ranch it grew, through other homestead filings and purchases, from the original 160 homestead acres filed by Eben Hughes, to over 3,000 acres by the 1940s when it was sold, first to the Hatch Family who then sold it to the Phipps Family of Denver. Phipps made it into a contract-cattle ranch, which it still, in 2011, is. No family lives there now only hired hands and a ranch manager (native of Argentina.)

The Eben. Ellen Hughes Children about 1907

Pictured around 1907 - right to left . Leila (oldest) Edward, Mary(youngest) Walter, and David Ralph, my father.

While Ellen and Eben obviously spoke Welsh around the children as they were growing up, Eben having grown up in America had mastered English with outsiders. Ellen learned it at her schools in Wales. She knew both languages. But one humorous incident happened that underscored the problem a two-language household founded by immigrants encountered. When Edward and Walter first attended elementary school in Kiowa, 15 road miles away, they came home the first day complaining that the children were not speaking “English”. The two boys were confused – the Kiowa children were, of course, speaking English, while the boys better knew Welsh. But they thought Welsh was ‘English!’

The entire Hughes Family, including 'Uncle William' about 1910

Above is the one best early (1910) photograph of the entire Hughes Ranch Family - including (on his horse) 'Thomas John William' a cousin of both Ellen and William - 'Uncle Will.'

From left to right are Eben, Leila, Mary, Ellen, Ralph (my father), Edward, and Walter. And Betsy their dog.

My Dad - David Ralph- with cattle at our barn - Ranchouse visible in background

Those two key buildings were there from the beginning of the ranch until it was sold in 1940.

The three boys grew up learning hard work, Christian values, doing chores, and tending the livestock that ranged across the growing ranchland, that was their family income.

Brothers Ralph, Walter, Edward as teens. And dog Rink

Sisters Mary and Leila

My Dad breaking a horse

Branding Time

While all five children helped run the ranch through their teen years the older boys, Edward and Walter proved they were developing into real athletes. Edward actually taught school in Elizabeth and coached its sports teams.

As the old 1898 Homestead House as it stood in 2005 - with great, great Grandsons David and Justin in front. It was 107 years old.

It was scheduled to be torn down by orders of Elbert County Government in 2007 as not being sufficiently 'up to code' to house contract ramchers. But it was still up in 2016. A more modern home for the ranch manager was built close by - you can see it to the left.

The original ranch house had a storm cellar (tornadoes were well known on the plains) which was also the closest they got to cold storage for the canned goods the girls and their mother Ellen produced. As a boy spending summers on the ranch I churned butter on the back porch and was fascinated watching a prarie dog which had an endless wheel to run on in its cage,

Interior Ranch House detail

Original detail from the inside of our Ranch House, that I saved on my last visit to it in 2005.

Interestingly enough, after the Hatch’s - and Phipps who bought the ranch after 1940 - kept the original 1898 Hughes Lazy O/T brand with one modification. They added a short bar beneath the O. So the Lazy O/T brand became the O Bar Lazy T brand. Which 111 years later still is the marking on the cattle on that ranchland.

David XIII pointing to the Brand with Bar

On their 2005 visit the big biting horseflies really spooked David and young Justin. They never lived 'where the buffalo roam.'

Family Disperses

World and national events caused all of the family to take divergent paths after our ranch reached its productive peak around 1920.

The ranch did well enough that both Edward and Walter were able to go to Colorado Springs to attend Colorado College in 1914 - a very well regarded small Liberal Arts college, with a reputation also for athletic excellence for its size. Both Edward and Walter starred on both the Football and Baseball teams. And played Basketball and ran Track. In fact the St Louis Cardinals tried to get them both to join the Cardinals. But wiser heads knowing the value of a really good education prevailed. Instead they graduated in 1918. That was during the first World War. All three boys were drafted. Their status was like ROTC. They were not shipped overseas, but could complete their last year of education.

Edward pursued a Business Major degree at Colorado College.

Edward warming up

Walter on left at a Colorado College track meet

My father, the youngest David Ralph also was given a brief opportunity to attend Colorado College several years behind his brothers. He was there one semester between September 10th, 1918 and January 4th, 1919. He took a few classes, but he too was drafted, and he terminated his few classes. The war was over - the November Armistice - while he was at CC. He never graduated.

My Father as a Soldier

The only picture of my father, David Ralph after being drafted for WWI Service. He never went overseas.

One of my Father's Experiences

Reminiscent of the dangerous snowstorms that can sweep the Colorado Plains, my father and another man were trapped in a blizzard out on the plains in 1915 when he was 17, while driving Hughes cattle to market. They had to try and make it to a farmhouse for shelter. When they got there the man of the house refused to let the freezing men sleep in his home. Nor would he let them put their cattle in his barn. He only let them sleep in the Barn. Which they did, one wearing the one good coat between them sleeping while the other stood moving constantly to keep warm until morning. They very nearly froze.

My father reminisced years later to the teen aged daughters of Helen - his wife who had two girls - Dorothy and Jeanne - by her prior marriage before I was old enough to understand it, when a similar ‘Townsend Tragedy’ happened on the Colorado Plains in the 1920s. Townsend drove a school bus when it got caught and stuck in a raging blizzard. The young children were trapped and getting ever colder when he tried to leave the bus to get help, but was found frozen to death hung on a barbed wire fence just a few hundred yards from a farm which he could not see. Two children on the bus died that night.

According to my half sisters, Dorothy and Jeanne, my father wept when he saw that Townsend was the same man who had turned he and his companion away years before. Rather than mutter something like ‘Deserved it’ their 'Daddy Ralph' was a compassionate man. He loved and cherished children, including the two that were not his own, and wept for the lost children on the unforgiving Colorado plains, never criticizing the man who turned him away in a deadly snowstorm.

The Ranch Family Matures

Eben Hughes prospered raising cattle and expanding his ranch over the 20 years after homesteading there. His reputation for business acumen and public affairs judgments grew among Elbert County ranchers. In 1920 he was elected Representative from Elbert County in the Colorado State Legislature.

During the 23 years Ellen and Eben lived on the ranch raising their children, Ellen began to be a follower of Mary Baker Eddy, and embrace the Christian Science religion rather than Methodism which Eben’s father practiced. I long wondered whether her adopting Christian Science came from her being cured of her physical problems by little more than Colorado clear air along with the self-confidence her prayer gave her, more than from any traditional medical treatment. In any event embracing Christian Science, with its rejection of modern medicine had good and bad Hughes Family consequences years later. All three boys - Ed, Walt, David - embraced Christian Science as their religion.

The first family tragedy struck in 1921 when Eben Hughes died from a massive heart attack at age 54, leaving only Ellen, Leila, younger Mary, and sometimes my father David Ralph to manage the ranch. By that time Ed and Walter had left the ranch after college graduation to make their way in the world seperately.

Lots of Hughes Ranch equipment and stock had to be auctioned off. The ranch income dropped greatly. That is why my dad could not continue his college education.

Two Views of the Auction Day on our Ranch after Eben Died

Change of Ranch Operation

Grandmother Ellen could not handle the ranch alone, even with hired help and Ralph, who also left. Aunt Leila the oldest Hughes child married Ray Snyder after Eben died .

So Leila and Ray stayed on and ran the ranch right up to 1940 when all the Hughes holdings were sold. First it went to a Hatch family, who then sold it to the wealthy Denver Phipps family who turned it into a contract cattle ranch.

All three boys had left our ranch by then. Ray and Leila worked on their own ranch for several years, and Ray became Simla's Postmaster for a time.

Leila and Ray Snyder

My father gave Ray Snyder a pair of spurs, famous in Texas, in the shape of a womans leg for a wedding present. After Ray died in the 1970s his family gave them to me.

Uncle Ray's Wedding Spur

The Snyders then moved back onto the Hughes Ranch and managed it until it was sold in 1940. And 'Mama Hughes' as Ellen was known by all her children was moved to Colorado Springs and given a room in Ed and Arleen's Wood Avenue home as she aged. She became a Christian Science Practitioner.

The Snyders had no children. But gentle Leila was loved by all her nieces and nephews who, from time to time stayed, especially in the summer, at the ranch. We still have a beautiful family leather scrapbook Leila hand tooled and filled with photographs dating from the time all the boys were still on the ranch - 1910 or so - until the early 1940s when the last picture in the scrapbook shows Walter pictured with his wife as he in an American US Army Officer's in WWII. The Brand and year of the Homestead is engraved on the cover.

(Important Note: There were over 300 small black and white photographs in the album. Several key ones are included here with this narrative. But all 300, including whatever was written on the backside of the individual pictures, will progressively be added to the online digitally archived and publically accessible 'Hughes Collection' of all the scores of thousands of photos, documents, maps, writings covering all 83+ years of my life and works, titled 'The Dave Hughes Legacy'. Son David is doing the technical work, which will never be finished since all branches of the Hughes family down through the present 5 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren - who are already digitially savy are being urged to 'continue' the Hughes family story, online, forever. Credit goes to Daughter Rebecca for much of the genelogical research shown here, and to Cousin Ann Benwell, of Menai Bridge, Anglesey, Wales for her contribution to the Elin Jones Family history in Wales, and for Welsh-to-English Translations of family correspondence)

The Hughes Brand - Lazy O/T - Album Aunt Lelia Hand Tooled in Leather. Note the 1898 date

My father, David Ralph, having not gotten a good college education worked for a time continuing on the ranch and moving its cattle to market before he too, left. He became a General Food's Salesman, and took me with him in his Model A Ford when I was about four or five years old.

Edward went into the Investment business after college. Being prudent and conservative, he was not wiped out by the Great Depression. In fact while working in a Brokerage in Denver, he met Arleen Wilson, a finance clerk, married her, and they moved to Colorado Springs to go into business there. They never had children. They were a very attractive couple.

Walter, after college, took a position as an Athletic Director in a College in Washington State. Later he also got into the investment business back in Colorado Springs. And for a time shared an office with his brother Ed.

Early Life (3)

2011-06-22T19:07:07-06:00

Summary of the lives of the 5 Children of Eben and Ellen

As I have written, Leila, the oldest child stayed on the Ranch, married Ray Snyder, and managed the ranch up until it was sold in 1940. They had no children.

Edward the second oldest, I have covered above, with Arleen as they created the E.W. Hughes Investment Company in Colorado Springs which existed until after Edward's death in 1939, which Arleen then managed and owned until her death in 1969.

Walter Hughes

Walter Hughes, after Colorado College took a Coach position in a college in Washington State. He also attended graduate courses at the University of California. Then later returned to Colorado Springs where he, like his brother Edward, went into the Stock Market business. For some time he even had his own office in Ed and Arleen's space on the 5th Floor of the Exchange National Bank building in downtown Colorado Springs. (that suite of offices was originally occupied by William S Stratton, the somewhat excentric first millionaire of Cripple Creek whose fortune started with the Independence Gold Mine in 1891)

Walter married Jane Ewing in Colorado Springs. Their first child was called Ewing. They lived on Tejon Street. That marriage did not last. But Ewing, whose life was, I think, warped a lot by that unfortunate marriage situation, never-the-less was always welcome in Arleen and Ed's mansion at 1225 Wood Avenue on Millionaires Row, as another 'nephew.'

We played together when I lived for a year 1935-36 there at Ed and Arleen's house while my mother got her feet on the ground with my 3 sisters in Denver after my dad Ralph died during the worst of the Depression when she could not provide me a home. Ewing was mechanically talented far more than I, and was always building things out of wood and metal. He later flew and owned small aircraft. But he was always kind of out-on-the-fringes of the family.

Walter like his brother Edward was interested in flying. He owned a small private plane.Which his son Ewing also did.

Walter, who was, like his brother Ed, and my dad Ralph, drafted in the first World War the year it was ending, seemed to have a little taste for things military.

Walter Hughes in his WWI Uniform 1917 or 1918

When World War II came with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 Walter immediately volunteered to serve in the Army Air Corps. He did not get to fly but he was commissioned because of his College education and served in administrative fields on account of his business background. He was proud of his service, wore his uniform always and rose, during the war to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, but I never saw him during the war).

He courted and then married Flora McQuarrie, who, as I recall, was an Army Nurse. Below are several photographs which came out of Leila Hughes Snyder's Ranch Album.

Walter and Flora just after they were married. Photographed in front of Ellen Hughes (his mother, my grandmother's) apartment on Cascade Avenue, Colorado Springs. (Picture of Ellen)

They had a first child, Richard, while Walter was still in uniform. (Notice his Lieutenant Colonel's silver leaf. They were visiting 'Ed and Arleen's Wood Avenue house with its big back yard, pictured below, sometime in the late 1940's with a small fish-pond pool in it. Richard was a toddler when he, alone in the yard for just a few minutes fell in and drowned. It was a tragedy which they got over eventually and had a second child, which they named Gary. He became a successful businessman and last time I visited him he had a nice family in Virginia, near Washington, DC. He was in his late 40s.

Walter and son Gary

Rear Yard of 1225 Wood Avenue - Ed and Arleen's Home from 1930

One can get the idea of what the Ed and Arleen Wood Avenue Mansion was like from this view of its back yard. They were able to buy it for $20,000 in 1930, and a Mining Company which owned it went broke. In 2014 it was appraised at $1.1 Million, and a Bank President's family owned it.

Walter had a successful life and career in investment banking, living near Cleveland, Ohio most of the rest of his life. He and Flora visited Wales - the ancestral home of the Eben and Ellen family. This was in the 1970s, while Walter was aging and sick. But they were able to visit the Ellen Jones family in north Wales, where the family had, on the wall, a painting done in Wales of Ellen - probably from a photograph when she was about 20 years old. The painting was in bad shape from age and the usual humidity of Wales, but since it was of Walter's mother, they asked whether he would like it. He did.

It was shipped to their son Gary's home in Virginia. He had it professionally restored. It hangs in his home after Walter died in Cleveland, March 7th 1970 and after Flora died at 90 in 2001. When I visited Gary Hughes in Virginia in 2002, I photographed that original painting of Ellen Jones Hughes.

Ellen Jones at about 20 in Anglesy Wales before she, at age 24 immigrated to America and married Eben Hughes

Mary Hughes

Mary was the youngest Eben and Ellen Hughes child, born on the ranch after my father David Ralph, had been born in a soddy on the homestead grounds.

She grew up on the ranch, then left it, I am not sure when. But she ended up in Omaha, Nebraska and married a John Kretchemer. Once again, there was that 'Omaha connection.' I have not been able to find out just what Welsh family or families may have lived there - who were visited repeatedly by those - Eben, Will, then Ellen, and finally Mary, as they passed through.

However, as in many other nationalities, such as the Irish, and Scottish, immigrants to America made a bee line for communities of prior countrymen who were already settled in America. In the case of the Welsh, the ability to speak and listen in their Welsh tongue and not just English was helpful.

Today, 2011, there is still a very active Welsh community in Denver, Colorado, which meets annually and celebrates St David's Day - March 1st - with singing, music, and dance every year. (As I do, as the oldest direct descendent of our Welsh ancestors, delivering Leeks for the grandson Boys and Men, Daffodils for the granddaughter women and girls in Colorado Springs every year on that day.) Two of my very young great grandaughters were named "Caitlyn" and "Brin" Welsh names by their mothers, and one of my grandsons is named 'David' - all to perpetuate the continuity of our Celtic/Welsh ancestral line.

I learned much later - in the 1970's - that John Kretchemer was born in Pueblo, while HIS father died in Westcliffe, Colorado - up in what is called the Wet Mountain Valley, west of Pueblo. That German name came from the fact that the 'German Colonoization Company' came out from Chicago to the Wet Mountain Valley and tried collective farming. Which failed. But Germans from that group stayed, and some drifted back to Pueblo and points east. John Kretchmer came from that stock and ended up in Omaha where he met Mary.

I am not sure just how it came about but Mary and John got into the Photography business. They became very good professional photographers and opened the Kretchmer Photography Store in downtown Omaha. They had two children, Keith and Joan who grew up there in Omaha, and still (2014) are alive. Keith having gotten into the Stock business became, and is married (to a nurse when he was a commissioned officer during the Korean War), became wealthy and has a raft of kids.

Joan, very naturally bright, was taken into Arleen Hughes's Wood Avenue home after her mother Mary died because John could not give her as a teen ager a proper home. So Joan went to Colorado College, living at the Colorado Springs home with Arleen each summer while living in the Dorms during the school year, did well, graduated and was recruited into a US Government agency and served in it in foreign countries for a number of years. Then, in California, she married Ernesto Paniagua, Mexican by birth. And they went into the automobile export-import business, linked with his many relatives in Mexico. They had no children. Ernesto died in the 1980s. She still (2011) lives in California.

Both Mary and John Kretchmer - as did all the other nephews and nieces, visited Colorado Springs, Arleen Hughes, and took many excellent family photographs. Here below are some of the rarer once which came out of Leila's (Mary's older sister) Hughes Ranch Scrapbook.

Mary and John Kretchmer in the 1930s

Mary as photographer. I always knew she was the better photographer, John the better businessman

The Kretchmer Home in Omaha

Mary, Joan, and Kieth

Rare picture of Edward with young Kieth and grandmother Ellen (and maid's arm) in the Wood Avenue Breakfast room just before he sickened and died from food poisoning.

Breakfast Room had very large single pane window that looked out over the large yard with the fish pond in it. This picture was taken by Mary Ed's sister and young Kieth's mother.

Periodically while both Ed and Arleen were alive, the Hughes brothers and sisters, sometimes with Mama Hughes, and members of the Wilson Family - Arleen Hughes side of the family from Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania - would picnic on the higher ground on the eastside of Colorado Springs called "Austin Bluffs' and later designated by the city as 'Palmer Park" The below photo taken in the 1930's.

Picnic on Austin Bluffs. Ed and Walter standing. Leila and Ellen seated.

Walter and Edward

Mama Hughes with Marvis Wilson, Arleen Wilson Hughes sister.

Christmas around 1944. Taken by Mary Kretchmer. Left to right - Ewing Hughes (Walter's son), Bette Hughes (David Ralph's Daughter) Arleen Hughes, me David R Hughes standing, Joan and Keith Kretchmer.

Next is a long PDF File about Arleen Hughes' Life. It is my Tribute to her.

Just click on the blued name 'Arleen' above, or cut and paste this long URL below into your browser.

http://www.davehugheslegacy.net/files/ArleenHughes/arleenhughesall.pdf

Early Life (4)

2011-01-30T22:20:47-07:00

My father David Ralph had left the ranch for Denver seeking opportunity when he met Helen Sayre, nee McDaniel, divorced with two daughters - Dorothy and Jeanne. She was running a small Denver boarding house trying to make ends meet with her two daughters when Ralph stayed there.

My Life Begins

Helen and Ralph married Dec 25, 1924, and I was the first born of that union, May 18th, 1928, as I said, on a kitchen table in Englewood, Colorado. I was born just one year before the Great Crash of 1929, and the following Great Depression.

One of the earliest pictures of me

Times got tough for my father and mother. We lived in Pueblo. I have City records showing we lived in no less than 6 rental homes. In one place on the fringes of town I remember we had a milk cow tethered in the back yard and my mother sold eggs and milk.

My father became a General Foods salesman. And reflecting his Welsh heritage, he could sing, while I, his son, never really could. One memorable day while I was perhaps 6, I remember he took me down the Front Range of Colorado - in our early Ford - to make sales of General Foods products. When he got to Walsenburg, he put me up on the counter, and had me sing “Home on the Range” to help him close a sale.

Model T at the ranch, similar to the car my father owned

Me, as photographed by a Travelling Vendor

Young as I was my father did what he could even though we lived then in the city, to remind all what cowboy stock I was from.

My sister Bette Lee was born in 1934 in Pueblo. Which made her six years younger than I.

Bette Lee Hughes

(I do have a later picture of Bette visiting the ranch too which I will post here. But I have to find it - it is not in the Leila Scrap Book)

When Bette arrived we lived in a Spanish style house right across the street from the famed ‘Bessemer Ditch’ of Pueblo County. That was a vital irrigation ditch that was created in 1897 which ran through many residential areas of Pueblo. It was at least 10 feet wide and several feet deep past where we lived at 630 Van Buren Street.

Van Buren had a bridge across the ditch which led, two blocks away to a small public park with swings and gym bars which kids, including me, liked to play on.

The only problem was that we owned a German Shepard, called Gretchen. If anyone was more concerned than my mother about the dangers of me falling into the Ditch, it was Gretchen. She simply would not let me cross that bridge to reach the playground. But she also had an Achilles Heel. She, in turn, was frightened of lightning and thunder.

So one day, it stormed, and my mother had to lock Gretchen in the basement. When the weather cleared, my mother asked me to walk to the grocery store – also over the bridge – and buy some bread. I did that, but when I returned and put the bread on the counter in the kitchen with the change, I dashed out the door, raced over the bridge, and free at last, ran to the playground and played a long time with other kids.

Meanwhile my mother, having had to tend to baby Bette somewhere in the house, didn’t hear me leave. But when she saw the bread and change, and no me anywhere within shouting distance outside, she panicked.

When I walked back from the playground, I saw a commotion on the far side of the Bessemer Ditch. My mother was there, uniformed men, and they were throwing something into the water. They were grappling for my body!

Then Gretchen, the dog, spotted me, raced over the bridge and pulled me by my britches all the way back across the bridge!


630 Van Buren Street. Bette Hughes who was born there in 1934. Pictured in the 1990s.	The Bessemer Ditch by our House

The Five Other Places we lived in Pueblo, between 1930 and 1935. (All six of these pictures were taken Feb 8th, 2007)


!003 Carteret Street	305 Berkely Avenue	632 Euclid


305 E Orman	924 E 8th Street

My mother, Helen, was always able to wheel and deal places for us to live while we were struggling to make a living in Pueblo. That served her well after my father died and she had to move us to Denver, and she was able to lease a series of larger homes to rent out rooms and run them as Boarding Houses.

My memory of my father was very spotty. For he was gone a lot, trying to make a living. Hard up as we were, he tried to be generous with down on their luck others. One day a man who was peddling his art came to the door. Besides giving him a meal my father bought one of the man's collage, three dimensional paintings.Those were the times when men, and women, would try to peddle whatever they had to offer door to door.

One of the original Depression Era Paintings my father purchased from a house-to-house painter

Another incident happened while we lived in Pueblo. On day my mother took me to the premises of a local radio station, where they must have offered the public the opportunity for kids with some talent to exhibit it over the radio. I am sure in that era of 'Shirley Temple' and other cute children in early movies, my dad probably prompted my mother to take blonde, curley haired me, to sing - probably again 'Home on the Range'. I am sure my mother thought there was a chance that somebody might pay for my child-actor talent. Fat chance. For I knew I could not sing very well. Maybe write.

But then the other half of the story stuck with me. When we got home, I remembered going over to our big brown - with an arched top - radio. For the first time as I stared at it, I tried to vizualize what it took for the radio station to take my voice, project it over the air to radios like that which large numbers of people in their homes could hear. The technical 'concept' of radio got through to me at about 5 years old.

One of my other early memories of my father was of riding out to the ranch with him in our early Model Ford. We were arriving long after dark in a rainstorm, and had to cross the fast moving, very wide, if shallow, Comanche Creek. For some reason he had chosen to drive north out of Kiowa about 10 miles, then east on the county road that would lead to our mailbox, instead of driving east four miles out of Kiowa, across the Comanche Creek bridge, then 10 miles north to our mailbox parallel to Comanche Creek - the most regular route. Maybe he learned something in Kiowa about flooding Comanche Creek reaching the dirt road next to it all 10 miles north. I can still remember – I was perhaps 5 years old at the time - standing on the passenger seat looking through windshield at the weak yellow headlight light reflecting off fast running turbulent water rushing past our front, and splashing against our left door. Intermittent Comanche Creek was at least an eighth of a mile wide there. Wide, fast, shallow water after a cloudburst was dangerous, and I sensed it. It was frightening. I didn’t know until years later what the term ‘flash flood’ meant but we were in one. But the sporty Ford with its four narrow wheels were on a hard, if wide, sandy bottom which my ranch-raised father obviously knew existed beneath, and he trusted. So we made it safely across the Comanche in the dead of night to the Ranch house.

I spent many entire summers, both before and after my father died on that ranch. I first learned to shoot there – at coyotes in their orchard. And at rattle snakes. And how to milk the cows, collect the eggs, feed cattle in the barn, and observe a cow delivering a calf midst the cactus and Soapweed – called Spanish Bayonet by others. And ride at a very early age with the ranch hands rounding up the cattle over the other, east side of the high ridge that divided the ranch between the Comanche and West Bijou creeks which flanked our ranch.

Then I would sit with the ranch hands on summer evenings after supper, with their backs leaning on the ranch house wall, talking and picking their teeth with weed stalks, while the sun was setting. My big ears took in all the down home western wisdom cowboys were willing to part with.

To Aunt Leila who stayed on the ranch I owe learning how to drive a car. When I was about 11 or 12 she trusted me to drive alone from the ranch house 1 mile down the dirt track to the county road where our gate, cattle guard, and Rural Delivery Mail Box stood. Get the mail and drive back in a stick shift early Ford. All I had to do was keep the wheels in the road ruts the whole way, shift gears, use the gas and break pedals. I couldn’t get into much trouble, for if I oversteered, the wheels just went off into the cactus. It was from her I learned from that manual gear shifts on cars of that day formed the letter 'H.' And one shifted from the near side bottom of the H as low, to the right top as 2d, then to the right bottom as high gear. I never forgot it during the stick shift era of Detroit.

As I realized later kids my age only knew how to operated automatic drives. not a stick-shift car.

By then we lived on east 8th Street, Pueblo,on the far east side of town in an old dark brick, deceased doctor’s, house. Street car tracks passed in front of our house. Fountain Creek, coming down from the north beyond Colorado Springs and beyond crossed under 8th street 4 blocks west of our home.

In the early spring of 1935 Southern Colorado got a huge rainstorm. A legendary flood started west above Colorado Springs causing destruction all the way south down Fountain Creek through Pueblo to the Arkansas River. I remember the night after the immediate rain stopped, walking up the street to the blocked-off 8th Street bridge over Fountain, and seeing, with amazement complete frame houses floating down the river going under the bridge. My first exposure to the damage ‘flash floods’ could do in populated areas. I was learning what the extreme climates of Colorado could bring about.

Then the second family disaster struck.

Death of My Dad, D. Ralph Hughes

One morning when I awoke, I looked inside the garage to stare at our car which had carried my father, another man driving him back home from a business trip for he got very sick on the road. Next thing I knew I was sitting in a car at night outside the Pueblo Hospital with my sister Bette, while my mother stayed inside for a long time. He had had a ruptured appendix, but having been brought up in the Christian Science faith, declined medical help until it was too late. He died March 8th, 1935. He was 37 years old.

I was 7 and my sister Bette was 1. That was a calamity for my mother, for we had little insurance and it was the Great Depression.

Evergreen Cemetery Colorado Springs

So I grew up from the age of 7 without a father.

Meanwhile Edward and Arleen had begun to make it in the stocks, bonds, and investments business. He, with wife Arleen as a partner was rising on the economic bubble of the mid and late 1920’s. They had one saving virtue. They made, with their own funds, conservative investments in basic industries – in North Field water that served Colorado Springs, in Utilities stocks, later Utah Ice and Storage which were not big boom-bust speculative stocks.

They established the office of E.W. Hughes and Company on the 5th floor of the Exchange National Bank building in Colorado Springs. Arleen essentially ran that office, while Ed opened an office at 1 Wall Street, New York City, close to the New York Stock Exchange, and to and from which Edward flew on one of the earliest air carriers - United Airlines. Before he died he had a plaque from the airline showing that he had flown the equivalent of 4 times around the earth – just between Colorado and New York - in the mid 30's.

His wife Arleen never put her foot on an airplane step all her life.

'Uncle Ed' got me my first Plane ride. A big Trimoter Plane which offered short flights to residents landed at the Alexander Aircraft Company field on the north side of Colorado Springs.

After my father died in Pueblo in 1935, and before Ed died in 1939, the three brothers had an understanding that they would help out each other if they got in trouble. My mother, Helen was desperate during the Depression to find a way to support we four children. So she moved to Denver with the three girls, living at first in affordable apartments, and then trying her hand at running a series of reasonably successful boarding houses in south Denver. She could not make a home for me there yet. That was a problem.

So Ed and Arleen took me into their Wood Avenue home, from where I walked to and from Steele Elementary School and got the first clue that I had some talent for writing – a legacy of my Celtic Welsh heritage – when I was promptly promoted a grade level for my excellence in ‘reading and writing.’

It was about that time, when I was living at Arleen and Ed's mansion that my beyond-school interest in writing and reading emerged. I started reading voraciously, and idly began to write little stories on yellow pads, longhand.

The Wood Avenue mansion had two libraries - one in the formal dark 'living room' with its overstuffed chairs, grand piano, and another in the informal, better lighted, large den where a tall reed organ also stood.

The bookshelves in the living room had classics like Thackery novels, the complete Shakespeare plays, and 12 volumes of big red 'Smithsonian Scientific Series' books. The Smithsonian even had a section that had been imprinted with flousescent ink displaying an under-ocean scene that could be made to glow in the dark as it described the technology and chemistry.

In the den were individual books, including more popular western ones like "Stampede to Timberline."

Those two libraries were the 'expected' acroutements in modern mansions. I never saw either Ed or Arleen read any of them.

I began to devour all of them.

About that time Uncle Ed brought me a complete booklet with lessons in French in it. Together with occassional comments I overheard, I think Ed and Arleen were considering sailing to Europe, and taking me with them,

About that time, my Grandmother Ellen Hughes, having left the ranch in the hands of Leila and Ray Snyder, also lived at Arleen Hughes home on Wood Avenue. She had become what is called a ‘Christian Science Practitioner’ – someone who through prayer helps people in need. She earned an income from that all her remaining life. Sometime between the 1940a and 50s, she got to travel to Boston to see the 'Mother Church' and stay there for a few days with other Christian Science friends from Colorado Springs, where its Christian Science Church still stands on Cascade, Avenue.

I attended Sunday School there for the year I lived on Wood Avenue.

I was impressed by the gentle teachings about Christianity that was I exposed to. No hell fire and damnation. Christian Science was a gentle, intellectual, religion. For some reason I strongly remember one male Sunday School teacher who had to catch his breathe when talking. For I was told he had been gassed in World War I. But, as a Christian Scientist, he sought no medical treatment for his affliction.

Ellen ( 'Mama' ) Hughes, in her late 80s with daughter Leila.

Notice the photograph of her son Walter when he was in uniform in WWII. And next to her is her Bible, and Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy.

She was getting elderly by this time from life on the ranch. So she largely remained in her room reading by a window in her set of rooms. She was a profound influence on me at the age of 8. She was very gentle and soft spoken, gave me a Bible, and we had many long talks in her room as she quietly instructed me in life. While she introduced me to Christian Science and its emphasis of the value of belief and prayer rather than doctor and pills for ailments, my practical nature recognized limits to total reliance on prayer. Yet, all my long life I have managed to avoid pills, doctors, and the current total reliance on ‘medicine’ and 'pills' to cure everything. I am not and never was a pill popper even though I have lived a very active life in the US Military and its wars, and made expeditions to remote places. But I maintained surprisingly good health into my late 880s.

And I noticed later in life the rise in recognition that the health of ‘the mind’ could have a large influence on the health of the body. Not calling it ‘religion’ but some forms of ‘therapy’ to the same end. Beyond the reach of pills.

My reluctance to ‘go to the doctor’ often irritated my children and sometimes bothered my wife. But as the twig is bent…

Uncle Ed took me up on my first Airplane ride on a Ford Tri-Motor passenger plane which flew into the Alexander Aircraft Company field off north Nevada Avenue, and offered a series of short flights for the public. This was in the early days of Flying. Uncle Ed was always progressive.

Republicans to the Core

Ed and Arleen were the Republican beautiful people of Colorado Springs. Attractive and successful, making their way in the heady capitalist world of finance. The five children of Eben and Ellen Hughes never drank nor smoked, even during that Flapper 20's Era of booklegged liquor. And that non-smoking habit was passed down to all their children, including me. And in my later life I was pleased to know my three children never smoked either - perhaps from my model as their father - and took liquor only in moderation.

Arleen Hughes in her salad days.

Handsome, well tailored Ed Hughes, in front of their Wood Avenue mansion.

Then the Great Depression came.

But they were not wiped out. Their conservative prudence, investing in enduring needs, Water system paid off - Water Systems, Ice and Storage businesses, Sugar agriculture.

In fact they were successful enough that, just as the crash of 1929 was looming, they were able to buy a mansion on Colorado Springs at 1225 Wood Avenue - on Millionaire’s Row which was created out of Cripple Creek Gold 20 years earlier. They bought it for only $20,000 from mining interests which were in trouble. The last time I checked - in 2000 - it was listed for sale at $2.5 million.

Because of the proximity of their home to the Colorado College campus, where Edward had graduated, and Arleen attended, they became benefactors of the college. To include the donation of a Sorority House to the College. And perhaps more significantly they invested savings of some of the staff and professors.

60 years later after a retired Colorado College Chemistry Professor – Otis Barnes – died in the 1980s he left the largest bequest ever made to Colorado College. When his well-provided-for widow Margaret was asked by the press how a mere college professor could have made such a bequest, she answered that Ed and Arleen Hughes had invested their funds wisely.

Besides investing their own funds, the Hughes's sucessfully invested the savings of many other persons in Colorado Springs.

Ironically, Arleen, who never completed college, though she attended three said that she didn’t think women needed to be a graduate. She had made it, so could they.

Ed and Arleen’s Wood Avenue home was the mecca to which all the relatives showed up, especially in summers, and including at Christmastime when a giant decorated Christmas tree – 12 to 15 feet high inside – graced a Den during the season. It stood next to a tall antique pump reed organ that I grew up playing around on.

Death of Ed Hughes

The third tragedy in the family occurred in the late 30s - the first having then been Eben’s death in 1921 followed by my father Ralph’s death in 1935. Edward Hughes in October 1939 developed food poisoning. On account of his adherence to Christian Science, he also did not go to a hospital. And after weeks of declining health - at home - he died in 1939. 46 years old.

The Ed and Arleen Mausoleum - Evergreen Cemetery

But the Hughes family had stayed reasonably close through all those earlier years. I have many photographs of all the siblings meeting on the ranch and in and around Colorado Springs. That is about when the next generation – including me and my younger sister Bette – started showing up at the ranch or at Arleen’s mansion in the summers. For those like Mary, the youngest, who married John Kretchmer developed a growing Photography business in Omaha, Nebraska the Ranch was a summer vacation spot, and ‘Aunt Arleen’s House’ with its 7 bedrooms , drawing room, large dining room, huge pane glassed in breakfast room, den room, sun room, was visited repeatedly by both Hughes and Wilsons from her Pennsylania side of the family.

Arleen Hughes never remarried. She took over the E.W. Hughes Investment Company affairs without a break. In fact those of us who thought for years she might just retire after Edward died and clip bond coupons for her income, she actively managed the company and expanded its holdings.

She regulated her life - and expected all others in her home, to regulate theirs on her invariable schedule. Breakfast was at 7AM sharp. When I lived there - in my own room on the top floor of the mansion, and was required to take a tub bath every single day, I would listen to the chimes on the large grandfather clock that stood on the second landing of the wide stairs and could make it to the breakfast room before the 7th chime. Don't be late was the rule.

And at exactly 8:45 I would watch for a fascinating and unvariable routine. A maid, carrying a small china dish with one cube of ice in it, would carry it up to 'Aunt Arleen's room. And then go back downstairs as soon as she had delivered the ice cube in Arleen's closed-door room. Later I figured it was for her morning ablutions - rubbing it on her soft white face.

Then she was driven to the Exchange National Bank building down Cascade Avenue by her chauffeur-gardener, Harry, in her latest model Cadillac, every morning at precisely 9AM,. She returned by noon to then manage through her gardener, cook, and maids her elegant mansion, grounds, and roses – which became an obligatory stop on various Colorado Springs Ladies society's and gardening outings. She had fine taste. From fine furs to Miocene China sculptures.

She made, by Pullman train car only, yearly trips to the Biltmore Hotel in New York City after Ed's death to attend meetings of the Boards of Directors of various corporations, where she was an investor and officer. Later, when she owned stock in a sugar business, she was driven – never over 50 miles per hour – to Phoenix, Arizona, where other of her investments were. I long suspected she may have had the smarter business brains than husband Edward.

One indication of her Republican credentials and an obvious willingness to contribute to political candidates whom she regarded as sufficiently 'conservative' came in on one of those trips to Phoenix. She stayed in a first class hotel, and supped in its dining room. One day in the 1960's she was dining alone, when Senator Barry Goldwater came to her table to introduce to her a litle known potential Presidential Candidate. His name was Richard Nixon.

Such was the importance of Colorado Springs wealthy Republican-cause doners.

Even though Arleen Wilson Hughes died 30 years after Ed, and she chose to run the E.W. Hughes investment company until her own death, she left trust funds with quarterly stipends for nephews and nieces from capital amounting to over one million dollars. J. P. Morgan still manages that trust 45 years after she died.

Arleen and Ed, then Arleen alone were quintessentially American rock-ribbed Republican Capitalists. I was reading in her den books by Republican Presidential Candidate Wendell Willkie when I was 11. The Libertarian publisher of the highly conservative Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper lived across the street. And at one gathering at her home when I was no more than 9, the elderly son of the founder of Otis Elevator Company, pressed into my small hands a finely bound copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Rock ribbed conservatism in the Hughes family.

Though neither Ed nor Arleen had any children they expressed their affection for their very many nephews and neices with their generosity towards them. They were not particularly demonstrative with the children who stayed there. In fact when I lived for a year in that mansion I regarded Aunt Arleen as somewhat cold. I was not very happy there or then in that large cold mansion. I felt lonely. Part of that feeling, I think, came from her never having any children of her own. The other part was the reserved, very self controlled, conservative and traditional life style she lived. She insisted on the boys and girls behaving themselves in her house, from the dinner table to the recreation room.

If she had any weakness, it was that she was a clothes horse, with scores of shoes, and hats.

When I met the few other children that were in the neighborhood with its many large, cold mansions owned by the very wealthy on Millionaires Row, I got a glimpse of how the wealthy of the world lived.

Ewing (Walter's son) Kieth, Joan (Mary's children), Bette and I (Ralph's son and daughter) at the Circus in Colorado Springs in the 1940s.

Me with Aunt Arleen at the 7 Falls in Colorado Springs

The fine Cadillac 1935 car owned by Ed and Arleen in which, Grandma Hughes and I at 7 years old got to be driven around.

There is a great story about that granite slab at the curb. For it was designed to be the step-down from a Horse Carriage before autos were available. But the new fangled automobile's doors often banged into that high slab. So Uncle Ed put four sawed off logs on the brick patio to the rear of the house, and put that heavy slab on them as a Picnic Table! Know what? IT IS STILL THERE! (2011) And not 1 in 10,000 people would know where that picnic table came from, including the current house owners. I am that one person who knows.

After having gone to Steele Elementary School in Colorado Springs, I was able to join my mother and sister Bette in Denver, where my serious education started.

My mother always wanted to dress me up, and have a photograph professionally made to mark my progress over the years.

Here is one of the earlier ones, taken when I was 12 years old.

Early Life (5)

2011-07-08T08:07:23-06:00

MY DENVER HOMES AND SCHOOLING

My mother, Helen Hughes managed to get a start after Ralph’s death in Denver making a living by operating a series of small boarding houses. Single rooms and board. Her guests were often single working women, some, divorced with one child, who worked downtown or along South Broadway, because the Denver Street Car system was well developed, fares were cheap, and work was plentiful if low paying in the late 30s.

It was then possible for her to give me a place to live as I started Middle School. My older half-sisters were eager to get out of the house and be on their own, while sister Bette, 6 years younger than I was still at home.

The next ten years of my life were a kaleidoscope of different homes, schools, and summer work experiences. Intermixed with stays at Aunt Arleen’s Colorado Springs House, and the Hughes Ranch. I got to know Denver quite well, especially South Denver.

I can still name the addresses where I lived, starting with 5 Grant Street, a small bungalow which had the advantage of being not only one block to Broadway and its street cars, but also Trailways Bus would pick me on Broadway and drive me to Colorado Springs where someone would meet me and get me to Arleen’s home. I did those trips many times.

A half block further north on Grant my mother opened a large home as a Boarding House. Probably with 4 guests at most, me with my own room, sister Jeanne with hers, and Bette in with Mother.

But then we moved to 840 Ogden Street, larger with three floors holding perhaps 6 paying guests. I went to Dora Moore School which was just two walking blocks away.

One day my sister Jeanne saved my life when I, playing cowboys against bandits with other kids, put a rope around my neck and stood on the porch railing, playing a bandit being hanged. The image was often played in the neighborhood movie theaters in the heyday of Westerns. I jumped off the railing and started to strangle when, for some reason, older sister Jeanne came out on the porch, saw me and lifted me up to freed me from the rope.

Life was still difficult for my mother. So much so that my sister Bette, when she was 8 needed a more normal life, so Aunt Arleen as she had done with me, let Bette live with her in Colorado Springs, while she went to Steele Elementary School for one year, before she moved back to Denver.

Budding Interest in History

It was living in that area of Denver I became aware of the ‘faded mansions’ part of town, which once, in the 1890s were built by successful businessmen, mining – gold and silver – ventures, and a very healthy brick industry, from which many of the homes were built. My latent interest in history began to be prodded. I was already writing short pieces about many things, in pencil. The 'Unsinkable Molly Brown's' house is in that neighborhood.

The second thing that further whetted my appetite for historic buildings was when my mother was able to lease a beautiful large 3 floor castle at 1000 Corona Street in Denver. She would turn it into a boarding house. It had been called the ‘Church Castle’ because a man named William Church, copper magnate, built it in 1894.

It was ghostly in places with secret passageways behind the walls – all of which I explored of course. And a crenellated roof with ramparts from which I threw down snowballs at kids challenging me. It looked like a Medieval fortress. It was beautiful, inside and out and made its own basic case for ‘Historic Preservation’ It was such a splendid example of 1890s architecture photographs of it ended in the elegant book “Denver On Glass’ – glass negatives of Denver scenes and mansions for the ‘First 50 Years of Denver’ and a treatise on ‘Denver Historic Mansions, with black and white photos and long descriptions of the owners and why they chose to build such buildings was published.

Sometime after I left for West Point, developers razed the magnificent building and replaced it with a dull appearing apartment complex. The outcry in Denver was so great, as the country began to value 'historic houses,' that the destruction of the Church Castle spawned the organization called ‘Historic Denver’ which set about saving historic building such as the Molly Brown House – the home of the Unsinkable (Titanic) Molly Brown.

While I lived in the Church Castle as a boy it was the most elegant Boarding House in all Colorado. It made a deep impression on me.

The 'Church Castle' in old Denver - at 1000 Corona Street

But my mother wanted more for me. Above all she wanted her only son to amount to something by getting a good education, and get me the influence by male men substituting for my dead father.

First Taste of Things Military

First of all she enrolled me in a long standing Denver organization formed by WWI veterans called the Highlander Boys. A kind of military boy scouts. My first mountain camping experience was with them near Estes Park. And I got to march up Broadway with a wooden rifle in front of the state Capital building when a Presidential candidate came to speak. I think it was Roosevelt.

But then she learned about the Colorado Military School, a military school which took boys from grade school through high school, was both a boarding and day school, had horses for military riding, jumping, equestrian skills, and offered a ‘prep high-school’ curriculum. Its education was comparable to other small co-educational prep-schools in Denver, such as Randall, and Kent Country Day. Most of the parents of students attending these were well heeled.

She could not afford to pay for my entry by herself. So she went to see wealthy Aunt Arleen, who was skeptical, but who finally augmented what my mother could pay, especially for the day school where I would be bused to and from the school daily with perhaps 20 other ‘day students.’

So I entered CMS in the 6^th Grade in 1940, and stuck with it through high school graduation in 1946. It was that experience that first introduced me to ‘military life’ with plenty of adult men around. There I learned about West Point. Since World War II started one year after I entered the school, and significantly, CMS prep-school education could prepare me for the far more demanding educational demands of the United States Military Academy. Possibilities for my future were beginning to take shape in my young mind.

CMS was a fairly small – just over 160 cadets – military school, some of whose students were ‘bad boys’ whose parents sent them to straighten them out. Other students were from relatively well-off Denver families who wanted a prep education but in the fashion of the day, some ‘military’ experience. Some were from out of state. In fact I learned how to dance The Charleston from fellow cadet Barclay Childers from Mobile, Alabama.

Cadet David Hughes

I am pictured at Colorado Military School wearing my prized 1945-46 Horsemanship Medal and 1945 Denver Chamber of Commerce Military Medal plus the Expert Marksmanship Medal I first won on December 7th, 1941.

On my favorite Cavalry school horse

One of my honors as I mastered the acadmic courses

The school was fashioned around the ‘mounted and cavalry’ experience, and associated military skills.

I thrived in that atmosphere. It provided me much of what a father would have given me had he lived. Most of the faculty was not eligible for WWII military service. A consumptive Harvard graduate, ‘Captain Mars’ taught me mathematics. A one legged Captain Roberts not only taught me Chemistry, but also was a confidante for a boy growing up in his teen years Too old for service Captain Slaby taught me military discipline. Colonel Hardy, the School Head, taught me horsemanship beyond what I learned on the ranch. The civilian football coach recognized my pretty good athletic abilities and made me quarterback my senior year. But above all the Principal of the School, Ramona Curtis, who was a graduate of Eastern Woman’s College, sensed my budding literary skills and tutored me in Literature and the power of Poetry and literary art.

For 4 of my 6 CMS years I was a day student. But I lived at the school the last 2 years.

I had already spent three of the six summer vacation times doing different things and going different places.

In 1942 I went hunting in a remote area of New Mexico out of a cabin owned by a classmate’s father.

In 1943 I got to camp and stay a week in a wilderness cabin in Yellowstone National Park, getting to know its extraordinarily different thermal activities. The rest of the summer I was able to go to Omaha, Nebraska where Aunt Mary and Uncle John Kretchmer lived and owned a photography store. There I learned, from down in the commercial darkroom, to handling cameras, and from both my uncle and aunt how to take and develop pictures, a photographic set of skills that served me the rest of my life. But those skills were also of value when I attended West Point.

In 1944 I went to New Mexico, lived with my sister Dorothy and her husband Karl in Tucumcari and worked for the US Reclamation Service on irrigation survey crews that went far out into the field, crossing many a ‘dry wash’ that became flash flooded, stranding us at times. We mapped out laterals and sub laterals for irrigation canals off the Canadian River. Hot work and I came home toasted brown.

Somewhere down there in southern New Mexico is a Sub Lateral that was named ‘Hughes’ after they ran out of names. Don’t know if it ever carried water.

Two experiences as a day student were noteworthy.

When we lived at 840 Ogden St, if I wanted to visit the school on weekends, which was in far southeast Denver near Denver University, I had to ride the streetcar to get close enough to walk.

One Sunday morning, I was scheduled to get to the school, and on the small bore rifle range, get qualified as a marksman under NRA rules. I took the street car all the way to east Evans Street and walked the 2 blocks on Columbine Street to the School, and down into the basement rifle range.

For about 3 hours I fired .22 Caliber rifles through all the paces, and by the end had my Expert Badge. So I was a good shot. But the session confirmed in me what I long suspected. While I was nominally right handed, I have always been a better shot – left handed. That fact would be both a curse and a blessing when I went to war years later, as many Army weapons are designed for just right handed shooters.

But while I was down on mats that December 7th day shooting along with 6 or 8 other cadets, a radio was playing in the background. I became aware by the talk of the adults present there was ‘news’ on. I just didn’t know what it was about. I was busy learning how to shoot a deadly weapon. When my training and testing time was over, about 3PM, I started for home. To save the fare I chose to walk the 5 miles home.

By the time I got home about supper time, World War II had started. It was December 7^th, 1941. I was 13 years old.

We later lived at 590 Lafayette Street – another boarding house - noted for being a block away from the girlhood home of Mame Eisenhower.

While as a CMS student during the war I wondered from time to time whether the Japanese were going to try and invade America, and I would be somehow fighting, the main thing that happened in me was that I suddenly took a keen interest in real and not comic book wars.

Tom Brown

The second thing noteworth was my developing my best friendship at Colorado Military School with a classmate improbably named Tom Brown. His father was a successful Princeton graduate, and in banking. He pointed Tom toward the same goal. We got along I suppose because we were academically the top two students for four years at the school. He was smarter than I was, but we competed vigorously. The teachers all saw that he was naturally bright and did not have to work hard to get all A’s. I only excelled through hard study work. Ramona Curtis the Principal really admired Tom’s talent, but seemed to see in me someone who got where I was going, and had a flair for writing.

Unlike Tom, who was overweight and not athletic, I was growing into a fast endurance runner and all around athlete for my high school weight that was around 145lbs. It was routine for me to run a mile up Buchtel Boulevard and back just for the heck of it. My height of athletic attainment came when I quarterbacked our high school football team, and beat larger and greatly more endowed Fountain Valley School a perennial adversary in 1945. I was also on the CMS team that was defeated 102 to 0 by a large Denver high school powerhouse, which got some national publicity. Win some and Lose some.

Tom Brown. Classmate

Tom Brown, my best high school friend who was far smarter than I, went to Princeton, was kicked out for drinking too much, was drafted into the Korean War - carried a BAR there - became a bank clerk, had a boy, but died in the 1960s. But his son graduated from CMS too..

Tom and I became fast buddies. One day he gave me a fat, 600 page book ‘War’ that his well educated father had given him as a Christmas gift. It was a compendium of scores of writings about warfare. In it I learned how the Japanese defeated the Russians in a Naval Battle in 1904. Historical Greek Battles. The Civil War. Napoleonic Wars. Excerpts about World War I.

I was hooked. THIS was my real military education. Strategy, tactics, leadership. Not just the drills of Colorado Military School or the parades of the Highlander Boys or the Pathe Movie News about the current war.

I began also, at the military school to attain higher and higher cadet rank.

Paralleling that, I was becoming part of risk- taking tick riding on our Cavalry horses. Not only did we do Hunts over obstacles out on the eastern limits of Denver, but advanced trick riding where I could stand on the back of my horse without special hooks for my feet (such as professional trick riders use) – just a horse blanket cinched down – and went over gates as high as 6 feet. A few large tumbles but no broken bones. And a crowd pleaser at all the shows CMS attended. I became an expert horseman while a few other classmates were as good.

Every year the CMS Horse Show team competed in the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo in January. On one occasion after I had attained high cadet rank, I got into competitive fun with the cowboys who bronc and bull rode, with me in my cadet uniform. We exchanged whisky drinks, and the school head Col Harding in the audience saw me coming out of the chute on a bucking bronco, tipsy, without my cadet coat or tie on, until I was bucked off.

Needless to say I was busted to cadet private from being the cadet ‘Major.’ Not the first time that I overreached in order to show my prowess, and was punished for it. I began to suspect I was a kind of maverick, even in a military organization. That I marched to my own inner drum a lot.

But I had already earned the Horsemanship Medal of the 45-46 year, and the Denver Chamber of Commerce Military award for 1945, and I stood second academically in my class for my accomplishments. But I was eager and ready to graduate by May 1946.

The Graduating Class of 1946


1946 Graduation Issue	Top Cadet	4 of 8 graduating incl me	other 4 graduating

(After I returned from graduating from West Point and fighting in the Korean War, I donated my West Point 'Tar Bucket' hat to Colorado Military School and Principal Ramona Curtis whom I always credited for getting me academically prepared for West Point. Here is a 1953 photo from the Denver Post about that event)

In the summer of 1945 I went to Salt Lake City, and became an ‘Ice Puller’ for the Utah Ice and Storage Company which produced ice for refrigerator cars on the railroad. Hard physical work, with heavy mechanical systems pulling large blocks of ice, getting it into the box cars as fast as possible after a car was ready. Real manual work. Good for me.

It was also there that I had my first encounter with a homosexual male who spotted me at a municipal swimming pool and attempted to seduce me that evening. It was a disgusting experience. And angered me that a man would try to take advantage of someone younger than he was. It was also clear I had no homosexual inclinations at all.

It was also there while I had just come out of a movie house in downtown Salt Lake City when the news broke about the first Atomic Bomb being dropped on the Japanese. Within weeks the war with Japan was over. I was just 17, and could have enlisted by then – but the war was essentially over.

Decision for West Point

So there was one more detail to attend to, which I had started in the spring of 1945 school year.

I had decided to try for West Point. I contacted my Aunt Arleen Hughes who knew a number of Republican Congressmen. She got Senator Eugene Milliken’s office to send me the requisite application forms. I then had my academic records sent to Admissions, CMS cadet military records witha letters of endorsement about my character and activities. And then I was scheduled for a medical examination at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver in April, 1946 which I passed. The only notation on that exam was that I had a 'deviated nasal septum.' A slightly bent nose inside. That was not disqualifying. What COULD have precluded my being admitted was the question of 'hay fever." Did I have it? Well, just a little, but I didn't press it, and I went on.

In fact I seem to have had it all my life, and especially in April in some places, including Colorado. It never affected my military service. Just an annoyance.

Senator Milliken, as all Congressmen were, entitled to nominate 2 successful Candidates for the United States Military Academy from their districts. He chose to accept all boys who wanted to go, then after their screening by West Point Admissions personnel for medical and other fitness, matters, subject them to a Competitive Validating examination. The top two scorers would be admitted.

I took the examination with about 15 other applicants, 4 of whom were also fellow Colorado Military Academy students.

I landed the top designation, and got a letter sometime in April welcoming me to the United States Military Academy at West Point, and to report on July 1^st, 1946.

High School Graduation

I graduated from Colorado Military School the end of May, 1946. I was the first graduate ever to go to either West Point or Annapolis. Just as the last Souvenir Graduation Publication went to press, it announced that I had been accepted at West Point. That was a big win for Principal Ramona Curtis, and the head of the School as an aid to recruitment of students. If CMS could produce West Pointers anything was possible. Tom Brown was accepted to Princeton.

Colorado Military School, which was founded in 1906 and became a ‘military boys school’ in 1918 evolved over the years into the more general co-educational Colorado Academy, which is very prestigious with a large campus and is quite successful today.

The last two months – June and July 1946 – before traveling to New York and reporting in, I spent on a Guest Ranch high in the Colorado Rockies on the Tarryall River. Courtesy of my Aunt Arleen who paid for it. I was able to get even more in shape hiking and running and riding my last horses (as I learned that that year West Point was discontinuing its Equestrian Training for cadets) saying, goodbye to the girls and civilization as I had known it. I had one girl whom I thought I was falling in love with but it was a tepid and ultimately sorry affair arranged by her socialite mother who thought I was going to inherit my Aunt's wealth.

I took the train to New York City, and then a bus to West Point. And joined 922 other young men between 18 and 23 years old determined to make it through the hardest, physically, mentally, academically 4 year institution in the US that already had proven itself turning out Army officers like Robert E Lee, Ulysses Grant, John Jay Pershing and in the recently concluded war, Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas McArthur, Curtis Lemay. The whole panoply of West Point Graduates who led 8 million Americans to victory in the great war.

I, of course, wondered whether I would measure up.