The Charles Arthur and Orilla Luella Hughes Family Organization
DEE MATTHEW HUGHES
Dee Matthew Hughes was born December 12, 1908. He was the fourth child and second son of Charles Arthur and Orilla Luella Leavitt Hughes. There were thirteen children in their family. Dee learned early in life that family was all important. He was always concerned about the family and their well being. To Dee, his dad's family was always the central and primary unit in his life. The Hughes Brothers operation would buy food , coal, supplies, wood, etc. by the truck load to get a good price. Then it was divided and made available to all as they needed it. It was the same when they slaughtered animals for meat Dee's "charge ahead and get the job done", ability extended well beyond the family. Everything he did had only one thing as its constant driving force: the survival and betterment of the family. To Dee, the family was the entire Hughes clan. Anything that Dee felt impinged on the family's business, he would not allow someone else to have control of. For years he was in the presidency of the Mesquite Irrigation Company. Dee was the constant, digging, nagging, prying, driving force that kept the effort going to get the Mesquite Dam and helped get Bunkerville's permanent dam built in the Virgin River. The year the dam was built was the only time for years, both before and after, that he wasn't president of the irrigation company. That year he gave up the presidency to be watchdog over the engineers and operators in the riverbed where the job that mattered was going on. He was in the same position in the thick of the effort to get the concrete canal built. It was Dee who made the contacts and arrangements to buy the land in Arizona, commonly called the "ranch". It was also Dee who went to Phoenix and leased the land on the bench between the ranch and the highway from the state of Arizona. Dee made the decision to go full time into the dairy business. For a few years the cows were taken to the town dairy for milking morning and night. It was also Dee's decision that they should build their own dairy barn. So everyone pitched in and built the first dairy barn on the south-east corner of the home-place lot. Dee continued taking responsibility for the dairy and the milking for some time. After some years of this, his knees became so crippled with rheumatoid arthritis that he could not continue the repeated getting down and up that milking required. At that time Uncles "Tex" and "Doc" stepped in to make sure that the milking barn job was done properly. At one time during all these activities of a very busy, hard working life, he really began to have some trouble with headaches, pains, and health problems. When he saw the doctor, he was told to drop all concerns of farming, family, and all worries. He should take an easier path in life or he would have a mental breakdown or wake up dead or like a vegetable one morning soon. He was told to take at least a year, leave all thoughts of the farm, leave the kids, tour the world , and get his mind on something soothing and un-troubling. To make a total change in life and relax. So Dee and Lois, and Grandpa and Grandma set up camp in Pine Valley for one summer. They were there for about six months. I guess to Dee that was a world away. It so happened that there was a man in Pine Valley that was milking a small dairy herd of milking short-horns. Before six months were past, Dee had made arrangements to buy most of his herd and was anxious to get them to Mesquite and into the milking herd. He hoped to increase the butter-fat content of the herd milk. Dee had a loud and rough manner of directing. It was his style of riding-herd on the family and keeping them together or bunched and moving them forward or ahead in life as a group. Dee was a strong engine for the family during the past generation. Loud, strong, reliable, and recognized by all as a source of power. He was also a great source of humor. He seemed to never be happier than when he was teasing the younger members of the family or playing tricks or pulling jokes on them. One joke he pulled turned out to be not so funny. Each summer for vacation, several families would go to cabin canyon so the men could round up the cattle to mark and brand the calves. One day they came back to camp and reported sighting a cougar. That night cougar stories were told around the campfire. The next day Lester and Cleave Barnum, Doris Tobler, Vida, Carmelia, and Owen decided to climb up the mountain to "White Rock". They were boasting about what the would do if they saw a cougar. They had nearly reached the top when Lester, who was a way ahead of the others, stopped and told them to listen. Everyone climbed up to where Lester was. A snarling, growling noise sounded through the trees and rocks. A startled and scared group of adventurers rushed pel-mel down the mountainside stumbling and falling all the way. It was a bunch of bruised and bleeding kids that came limping into camp. Vida gasped, cougar. The women were busy doctoring and bandaging all the cuts and bruises and organizing a hunting party to go after the cougar. Then Dee came down the mountain laughing about the joke he had played on the kids. Aunt Elmira Barnum was so angry that she wanted to drive him out of camp. This so called "joke" didn't turn out so well. Dee was always making up little songs and poems, usually to tease the younger sisters. When Aunt Tho was in kindergarten, she was in her class's rhythm band. Dee composed a song (poem) that he recited to her while pretending to play a violin. The song goes thus. "Butchup (Aunt Tho) and Bud ( Bud Barnum) were sweethearts. They both played in their little school band. The walked to their little practices. Two little lovers hand in hand". Aunt Tho didn't particularly like Bud so of course she cried and carried on when Dee sang to her. One particular time the kindergarten children were putting on a program for the town. The rhythm band was going to play. Everyone was ready, the curtains opened, Aunt Tho threw herself on the floor kicking and screaming. The teacher closed the curtains and got Aunt Tho settled down and ready to play again. The curtains opened and again Aunt Tho threw herself on the floor kicking and screaming. The problem? Dee was at the back of the room pretending to play a violin. After Grandpa sent Dee home, the program went off without a hitch. The younger people liked to go to the dances that were held in the upstairs of a building owned by the Hardy's. It was a big open room with no window coverings. It was called an open air dance hall. Dee sang or recited every time the younger people were getting ready to go to a dance "Oh, we love to go a dancing in the high up air. Where the pigeons are a roosting, and shitting in our hair". One time when the families were preparing to go to a reunion, Dee made up a poem about Aunt Tho, and Uncle Archie's sister Letty Leavitt, to tease them about hitch hiking to Las Vegas with the Coca Cola truck driver. "To Fish Lake we are going. To some reunion grand. To meet our little cousins and shake them by the hand. One week will be our absence and then we hope we can, be back in Las Vegas with our little Coca Cola Man." It wasn't often that anyone got the best of Dee, but it did happen on occasion. While the old dairy was still being used, some of the younger boys, perhaps Warren, Myron, and Derald, were cleaning up after the milking was done. Washing up milkers, buckets, etc. and washing the floors. As kids often do, they were playing around and not working very fast. It was getting late and one of the boys saw something go past one of the windows. They went into the milking room just in time to see the object go past the last window in there. Just then a "ghost" jumped over the fence and started into the milking barn. The boys yelled, "Spook! Lets get the S. O. B." They sprayed the "Spook" with the hose that they were washing the floor with.. The "Spook" ran down through the corral to the trees and disappeared. The boys were bragging about how they had got the "S. O. B." They went into one of the other rooms and there was the ghost standing at the screen door. Well, Warren grabbed a 5 gallon bucket of water that was sitting there and just drowned the "ghost", who left in a big hurry. The boys hurried and finished their work, then went to chase down the ghost. They went home and told their mom all about the excitement. Then they proceeded to look all around the place for the spook. Years later, their mom told them that the spook was their dad, and he had got in the house just ahead of them, and was in the bathroom cleaning up. Then they were scared. After Dee's and Lois's children were grown, and Arvil was called on his mission to Hong Kong, Dee and Lois were called to be Ordinance Workers, in the St. George Temple. They started working in the fall of 1964. They served one night a week for a year or two. They worked on Wednesday night. After the Temple was remodeled and re-opened, they were asked to serve two nights a week. They worked Thursday and Friday nights. There were three different Temple Presidents during the time they served. They Loved the work and had many spiritual experiences while working in the Temple. They were released on Friday July 18th 1980 to take effect on July 26th 1980. They worked a total of sixteen years. Submitted by Karla Lee |
