He was the youngest of three sons of Ralph Bloomfield Hughes (1882 - 1962), a postman,[1] and Larene (née Pike; 1891 - 1983), the daughter of an attorney and was raised in a middle-class family.

He was not drafted into the army in World War II, but joined out of patriotism, and served as a military electrician.

[2] Hughes was the eighth-great-grandson of The Reverend John Wing (or Wynge; 1584 - c. 1629), an Oxford-educated Puritan minister from London.

[7] In the 1980s, he moved to Blaine, Washington, known as "sin city" because of its lack of churches and high rates of gambling.

There he came out of retirement and assisted his son, the Reverend Jonathan P. Hughes, in founding a church which grew to over 150 members By the 1940 census, he had already acquired his first property.

[12] They had four children: Hughes died at the age of 99 at his home in Flint, Michigan in 2016 and was buried at Thetford Township Cemetery Rev.