| Honorific Prefix: | The Reverend |
| Birth Name: | Ralph Phillip Hughes |
| Birth Date: | 25 September 1916 |
| Birth Place: | Battle Creek, Michigan, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Flushing, Michigan, U.S. |
| Resting Place: | Thetford Township Cementary |
| Occupation: | Minister |
| Children: | 4 |
Ralph Phillip Hughes (September 25, 1916 - September 4, 2016) was an American minister. He was known for his own prominence in the Assemblies of God as well as that of his family. His ministry received much news coverage beginning in the 1940s.
Ralph Phillip Hughes was born on September 25, 1916, in Battle Creek, Michigan. He was the youngest of three sons of Ralph Bloomfield Hughes (1882 - 1962), a postman,[1] and Larene (; 1891 - 1983), the daughter of an attorney and was raised in a middle-class family. He graduated from Battle Creek Central High School and received training as an electrician. 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.[3]
After his military service, he worked as a foreman at a factory, a position of unusual authority given his age. In the early 1940s, he left this lucrative position for the ministry after receiving a calling. Over the next 60 years, he had ministries in Michigan, Washington and Kentucky at various times. He began pastoring churches in Hastings, Bedford and Battle Creek.[4] [5] During the mid-1940s, he received a home missionary assignment to Kentucky. There, he had difficulty preaching due to his stammer and the hostile culture of the locals toward Christianity. During an interview with The Flint Journal, he recalled:Following this, he settled in Clio, Michigan, where he pastored the Clio Assembly of God Church for 29 years. Hughes remained in active ministry into his 90s, hosting a bible study from his home. By the end of his career, he was one of Michigan's longest-active clerics, and was recognized within the Assemblies of God.[6]
Hughes visited South Africa in 1968 and preached through an interpreter. He officiated hundreds of funerals and weddings in the Flint area.[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.[8] According to his great-grandson, he also became prosperous by flipping houses in Michigan and Washington and rented out houses at various times.[9]
Hughes married Margaret Lucille Coville (1919 - 2004), the daughter of Percy Adelbert and Ethel Covill in LaGrange, Indiana on August 31, 1936.[10] [11] Margaret taught piano and art and painted fine china as a hobby. She and Hughes won several talent shows in Michigan for singing and trick riding.[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. Ralph P. Hughes at Find a Grave