FORT PIERCE FOLKS
BY GLORIA TAYLOR WEINBERG
Frances Hughes recalls how lost she felt when she
66
first moved to her husband’s home on Immokolee
Road in 1960. There were few paved streets west of
33rd Street in Fort Pierce then, and fewer Spanishspeaking
residents.
For an urban citizen of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, a state
capital known for its beautiful baroque and neoclassical
architecture, the culture shock was stunning. “For me, it was
like the end of the world,” she says. “I was a city girl, and I
didn’t drive, so you know what I used to do in desperation?
I would climb the orange trees, just to see what I could see.
All I could see was more trees.”
In Mexico, Hughes was a secretary for a French-owned
company that made leather gloves, denim clothes and other
items sought by the United States and other countries during
World War II.
“I also acted as interpreter for them when the purchasers
came from all over the world to buy the things we made,”
Hughes says. She met Thomas Hughes through one of those
purchasers, and after a lengthy correspondence, he asked her
father for her hand in marriage.
“My father made excuses; he didn’t want me to go so far
away,” Hughes says. “He said all I knew about the United
States was what I read in National Geographic. As it turned
out, he was right.”
After they married in 1953, the Hugheses first lived in
Miami, where Thomas Hughes worked as a mechanical engineer
at the airport. “Miami wasn’t so bad,” Hughes says. “I
could walk around the city, visit the stores. But here, it was a
different life. I had no neighbors, no one to talk to.”
To make matters worse, Hughes’ Irish-American husband,
who commuted only on weekends from Miami to Fort
Pierce, insisted that his wife be a stay-at-home mom, rather
than take a job outside the home.
“I couldn’t even drive my kids to school,” Hughes says. “My
husband tried to teach me, but…you know how that goes.”
Eventually, Thomas Hughes transferred to a job at Piper
Aircraft in Vero Beach, and moved his growing family to
a home on Delaware Avenue, close to St. Anastasia
School. “My life was happy,” Hughes says, “and then, it
was sad again.”
Her husband died of heart failure in 1962, leaving Hughes
with four small children. She went to work, then, as the first
secretary for St. Anastasia Elementary School. Her job
included caring for sick students, keeping track of tuition
payments, calling parents to pick up errant children, and
stamping library books.
Students, staff and parents came to rely on Hughes, and
to love her, according to Pat Caglioni, who works in St.
A’s office today. “Oh yes,” Caglioni says. “I think she’s an
incredible woman, so gentle and caring. I’ve known her
for 40 years, and I never saw her be angry or impatient
with anyone.”
And when Hughes learned to drive – which at age 90 she
still does, with a perfect driving record — her influence
spread. “Wherever I went — to the store, to school, to church
— I talked to everyone I saw,” Hughes says, laughing.
“Everybody knew me, because I was one of the first
Hispanic ladies in town. I embarrassed my children.”
“That’s true,” says Hughes’ eldest daughter, Carmen
Peterson, now principal of Oak Hammock School in Port St.
Lucie. “But that’s because we didn’t understand; we just had
to stand around and wait while she talked.”
Now, Peterson says she and her two sisters — all of them
educators — are in awe of their mother’s energy and enthusiasm.
“She just has a genuine interest in people, in learning
about people, helping people,” Peterson says. “She never
cares if they’re black, white, Hispanic, rich or poor.”
Hughes soon began holding English classes for migrant
families at a local trailer park. “When the first migrants
began to arrive from California and New York in the ’70s, I
made it my purpose to approach them,” she says. “I tried to
give them useful information, such as how to find a doctor
or child care. Most of them didn’t speak English. They were
lost, and they needed help with everything.”
She gave it, even in times of personal tragedy.
Hughes’ 10-year-old son was critically injured in 1967
when a car rammed the back of her parked car. For years,
friends, particularly fellow parishioners of St. Anastasia
Our
Frances Hughes helps a student in an English-as-a-Second Language class
at St. Anastasia School sponsored by Indian River Community College. At
90, Hughes leads the international team of teachers for the program,
which includes natives of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Peru, Argentina and Mexico.
>>
Mamita