Linda B. (Bennett) Hughes

Linda Bennett Hughes, 77, who loved New Mexico’s blue skies and purple mountains, and who was a caring mother, grandma, social worker and wife, passed away peacefully on July 19, 2019 under the care of Presbyterian Kaseman Hospital’s Hospice Care Program as the result of complications due to her long fight with cancer.

Linda was born July 11, 1942 in Elmhurst, Illinois, the third daughter of Gordon T. Bennett and Alta May Cothern Bennett. She attended schools in Glen Ellyn, Ill., and Houston, TX., and graduated in 1961 from Hillcrest High School in Dallas Texas.

She married Edwin S. Hughes on June 24, 1961, in Dallas. Ed was then a reporter and photographer for the Dallas Morning News, and later rose to be a division manager in the field of public relations and advertising for Southwestern Bell Telephone and AT&T. When he retired in Dallas in 1991, they moved to Tijeras, N.M., their first venture of living in the Land of Enchantment. After moving to Wyoming, Colorado, and Missouri, they returned to New Mexico and Albuquerque in 2012.

Prior to her life in serving others, Linda served as an executive secretary for Curtis Mathes, one of the pioneers in the color television industry. It helped that her father, Gordon Bennett, was Mathe’s chief engineer. While living in Dallas, she loved to plan and host parties, and loved to tend to her passion, taking care of flowers. She served as a Master Gardner in Dallas, and even served as president of the Master Gardner Cooperative in Dallas County.

She gave birth to two sons, Frank Mitchell Hughes in 1962 and Lee Gordon Hughes in 1963. Mitch has worked for and at Microsoft in Redmond, WA, and Lee is currently the Director of Conservation at the Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, N.M.

When Ed left the newspaper business, and joined Southwestern Bell Telephone in Dallas, he was soon transferred to corporate headquarters in St. Louis. While both of their boys were in elementary school in Kirkwood, Linda began to sew clothes not only for her kids but for herself to help control expenses. She then got a job with nationally syndicated columnist Eunice Farmer’s fabric shop in Webster Groves, MO, where she worked for two years.

While sons Mitch and Lee were growing up in their teen years, she worked at several art galleries in San Antonio, and even served as office manager of the Old Rock Saloon in San Antonio- perhaps one reason she later had to wear hearing aids. She later served as a volunteer worker at Veterans Hospital in San Antonio. It was that experience that proved she was a natural at helping others- a lesson she learned from her mother.

While Linda and Ed lived in Tijeras, she served as the secretary of the East Mountain Chamber of Commerce, after Ed served as the chamber’s president. They were also active with the Mountainside United Methodist Church where she sang in the choir and learned how to play bells with the church bell choir. She later served as a bell ringer at First United Methodist Church in Loveland, Colo., and later at First Methodist Church in Jefferson City, MO.

While in Loveland, at the request of her associate pastor, Linda was named to be on the founding board of the Loveland-Berthound Interfaith Hospitality Church Network in 1999-2000, helping homeless families with children get back on their feet. She loved counseling young mothers on how to cope with their children during those tough times when they were struggling to get into affordable housing. She was also a key player in re-naming the network’s home base as The Angel House, which still operates today in Loveland.

What her family and friends remember most about Linda was her hospitality, her warm and loving kindness to everyone, even strangers; and she was always the non-harried host of the family gatherings for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She was also a great planner when she made her first trip abroad to Ireland to attend a family wedding, and she became a whiz in planning other vacation trips to England, Ireland, and France.

Linda’s active life of travel and work in the community came to a halt when she was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in 2003 while living in Loveland. After two years of chemo treatment, she was proud to wear her sweater that declared she was a “cancer survivor.” She was free of cancer for 12 years, when it returned and required more chemo treatments. Linda also suffered from back pain as the result of a lower back injury as a teen, and neuropathy in her legs as the result of back surgery in 2004.

She is survived by her husband, Edwin S. Hughes of Albuquerque; two sons, F. Mitchell Hughes and wife Risa, of Redmond, WA., and Lee G. Hughes and his wife, Alison, of Cimarron, N.M.; a sister, Betty Bennett Phillips and her husband, Rev. Hudson Phillips, of Creddmoore, TX.; a brother, Roger Bennett and his wife Lois, of Sherman, TX.; and three grandsons F. Michael Hughes of Elko NV, Jesse B. Hughes of Albuquerque, and Taylor G. Hughes of Mesa, AZ,; two step-grandchildren, Roscoe Leiner of Seattle and Corryn Leiner Laflin of Renton, WA; a great grandson, Roamyn Laflin, Renton; plus many nephews and nieces.

Memorial Service will be held Tuesday August 6, 2019, 10:00a.m. At St. John’s United Methodist Church 2626 Arizona St NE, Albuquerque, NM 87110.