Biography: RONALD EUGENE HUGHES, age 79, of Little Rock, Arkansas transitioned out of this life on August 3, 2023. He lived life to the fullest on his own terms. He was a musician, an artist, a farmer, an energy efficiency guru, a great cook, a consummate teller of stories and jokes, a carpenter, an airplane pilot, an excellent dancer, an Army vet, a softball coach, a videographer, an eloquent public speaker, a world traveler, a visionary, an optimist, an amazing dad, and an overall delightful person to be around. After experiencing symptoms of cognitive decline over the past few years that recently culminated in a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, he sought to make his exit on his own terms just as he had lived. Through Dignitas, a non-profit organization in Zurich, Switzerland, he was able to do so peacefully and painlessly with his wife and daughters by his side.
 
Ron was born during World War II in Prescott, Arkansas on May 11, 1944, to Rose Burnell (“Tommie”) Hankins Hughes and Eugene Lee (“Jack”) Hughes, who was serving in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater at the time of Ron’s birth. Ron and his mother lived with her parents in their family home in Antoine, Arkansas (population 113) until after the war ended and his father returned. The family later moved to Little Rock where Jack got a job as a brakeman on the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Tommie operated just about every bowling alley in town at one time or another and was widely known as “the bowling lady.”
 
After graduating from Little Rock Central High School in 1962, Ron lived in many places and attended numerous colleges, earning the award at one of his class reunions for “most colleges attended without obtaining a degree.” As a young man he held jobs too numerous to count or remember, ranging from playing bass with a band called The Shadows in Newport, Arkansas at the Silver Moon honky-tonk establishment before he was even old enough to drink, working as a land surveyor and draftsman, driving a bread delivery truck in Ohio, bell hopping at a hotel and serving as a house parent at a home for wayward boys in Chicago, bartending, picking oranges in Arizona, and working on a solar energy project in Butte, Montana. He was no stranger to work, having had a paper route since he was eight years old and a number of other jobs during junior high and high school, including working at the concession stand at the drive-in movie, delivering flowers for a florist, working for a company that made highway signs, and learning to be a draftsman at an architectural firm.
 
While living in Chicago in his early 20s, Ron became friends with a group of young activists involved in the freedom struggle who were traveling to Southern states to help register Black citizens to vote. He made several trips with them, and that experience completely changed his worldview. Having previously never given much thought to issues of racial equality, he became an ardent supporter of the civil rights movement. While passing through Little Rock on the way back to Chicago on one of these trips with his van full of his fellow activists, he and the group spent the night at his parents’ home. That night Ron met with a couple of his high school buddies and told them about how his eyes had been opened to the plight of Black Americans. A few days later, after Ron and his companions had traveled back to Chicago, a cross was set on fire in his parents’ driveway, an event that continued to haunt him throughout his life.
 
Later on, in the course of helping his classmates plan a high school reunion, Ron was instrumental in reaching out to the lone Black student who had been in the Class of ‘62. No one had spoken a kind word to her throughout her high school years, and she had been denied the right to participate in any extra-curricular school activities such as attending football games or joining clubs. This student had left Arkansas as quickly as possible after graduating from Central High. Ron tracked her down in New York and invited her to come to the reunion. She reluctantly agreed, and at the reunion Ron met her and her parents at the door and made them feel welcome. Classmates who had shunned her in high school began to offer their apologies one by one. When the awards were handed out at their 1982 reunion, it was this Black classmate, Dr. Sybil Jordan Hampton, to whom the education award was given for having earned the most degrees since leaving high school. She and Ron remained close for the rest of his life, and he considered this experience to have further shaped his worldview.
 
As the war in Vietnam heated up and the draft was instituted, Ron considered moving to Canada but ultimately decided not to. Knowing that moving out of the country would prevent him from coming home to see his family, and considering his dad’s voluntary service in World War II, Ron joined the Army and was promptly sent to Vietnam where he served for two years. Based on his prior experience as a surveyor, he was assigned to the artillery where, according to him, his job was “to know where we were, if we were getting shot at, and to keep everybody safe.” One of his most vivid memories was being at his base camp on the day Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. He took up a collection for Dr. King’s family, and each and every one of his comrades in arms contributed. He was one of the luckier Vietnam vets in that he came home with fewer scars, both emotional and physical, than many. Despite his initial resistance to joining a war he didn’t condone, he said that by the end of his service he had no regrets and felt that he had done a good job and learned a lot.
 
When he left the Army in 1969, Ron moved back to Chicago where he had a leather store and learned how to make pants, vests, sandals, and other hippie paraphernalia. He used his GI bill to collect some more college credits and honed his musical talents at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. In a bar across the street from the school, he met a young postman who had written a few songs while delivering the mail and was nervous about singing on stage alone. Ron volunteered to accompany him on the stand-up bass, and thence forward John Prine introduced Ron to his friends as “my first bass player.”
 
In 1971, after selling the hippie leather store, Ron moved to Northwest Arkansas and bought a goat farm. From there he moved to a farm near Brixey, Missouri where he and his partner Vinnie McKinney established the first certified organic farm in the state which remains in operation to this day as Elixir Farm. He took classes in welding, fence-building, animal husbandry, and other general farming survival skills that were offered by the Ozark County Extension Service at the local high school. To make ends meet, he worked part-time on the MoPac Railroad, following in the footsteps of his dad who had recently died as a result of a tragic railroad accident.
 
While living in Missouri, Ron and some musician friends formed the Hot Mulch band which became the primary source of weekend entertainment for the ever-increasing number of young adults who had moved into that area as part of the “back to the land” movement. From that point on, he was always in at least one band, including his Little Rock bands RH & The Cute Girls and the Greasy Greens. In 1999 the Greens played at the White House for the President’s 53rd birthday and were quite pleased when the First Lady jumped up on the stage, shook a maraca on several songs, and said, “My dreams have come true, I’ve always wanted to play with the Greasy Greens!”
 
In the mid-1970s while still living on the farm in Missouri, Ron became interested in energy conservation, which was to become the bedrock of his career for the next 45 years. He took a class on the energy efficiency of houses and became part of a Missouri non-profit that designed air coolers and solar heaters. In the late ‘70s he was hired by the Arkansas Energy Office to develop an energy rating system for homes. He worked nationwide with other state energy offices to develop similar systems and eventually set up his own company to evaluate and improve residential energy efficiency. Over time he became known in the industry as “the father of HERS (Home Energy Rating Systems).” His mission was for every new home in the country to have a label telling the buyer how much it would cost to heat and cool the house. To date, over 3.4 million homes in the U.S. have been HERS tested and labeled.
 
Having returned to Arkansas in the late 1970s, Ron looked after his mother during the last years of her life. In 1987 he met his future wife serendipitously at Juanita’s Cantina, a popular downtown watering hole in Little Rock where his RH & The Cute Girls band was playing. He and Catherine married in 1990, and in 1995 at the age of 51 he became the father of twin daughters. After Haley & Alexis’ birth, he began working from home and was not only present for every milestone event of their lives, he did 99% of the cooking and hair braiding, coached their softball team, took them on weekend father-daughter camping retreats with the Indian Princesses, taught them how to draw, play music, properly poach an egg, ride a donkey, and use power tools, and likely has made it impossible for anyone wishing to be the girls’ future partners to feel up to the job.
 
Ron is predeceased by his parents and younger brother, Duane Hughes. He is survived by his bride of 33 years, Catherine Hughes; his daughters Haley Hughes and Alexis Hughes; his sisters and brothers-in-law Becky & Ken Malone and Mona & Nick Kroeper; his sister-in-law Carmen Hughes, his nieces & nephews Mathew Hughes, Jan Hughes, Chris Malone, Katy & Scott Buford, and Olivia & Ben Cross; his great nieces and nephews Logan & Kasey Hughes, Trenton Malone, Emma Buford, and Danny & Steven Cross; his daughters’ godparents Carol Epes, Charles Lord, Vinnie McKinney, and Joey Turchiano; as well as many beloved cousins and a host of friends.
 
In accordance with Ron’s wishes, an ash interment service will be held on October 8 at 3:00 PM in the columbarium garden on the west side of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 1000 N. Mississippi Ave. in Little Rock, followed by a celebration of life from 4:00 – 8:00 PM at the White Water Tavern, 2500 W. 7th St. in Little Rock. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation in Ron’s memory to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 1000 N. Mississippi Ave., Little Rock, AR 72207 (www.lovesaintmarks.org); Alzheimer’s Arkansas, 201 Markham Center Dr., Little Rock, AR 72205 (www.alzark.org); &/or Arkansas Repertory Theatre, P.O. Box 110, Little Rock, AR 72203 (www.therep.org).
 
The family wishes to express their gratitude to the Dignitas personnel for facilitating such a gentle, compassionate, and peaceful transition for Ron. For more information about this incredible organization, visit www.dignitas.ch to learn about the services they offer and ways to support their mission. Arrangements are under the direction of RuebelFuneralHome.com