Category Archives: Labor

Honoring Those Who Go Before Us: Jim Hughes – December 6, 1935

Jim said, “I made a commitment to myself and the world that if I was ever able to get out of that chair, I would dedicate the rest of my life to helping those who are less fortunate than I had been in my life.”

On December 6, 1935, Jim Hughes was born the youngest son of a union carpenter in Montgomery County, Illinois.

Upon graduating from high school in 1953, most of Jim’s former classmates were drafted into the service. Jim himself received orders to report 6 different times before finally receiving notification that he had been wrongly classified, 3 months prior to his 25th birthday. Instead of having a classification of 1A, he should have been classified as 3A, which meant he would only have been called up in the case of a homeland emergency. In the meantime it was difficult to get hired on with a 1A classification because employers knew it wouldn’t be long before workers were required to report for duty.

During the late 50's, early 60's, the economy was shaky and jobs were hard to come by. In the construction and building trades, as an example, you were lucky to accrue 600 hours a year. Jim worked on various union jobs, the first of which was as a laborers local, then he moved over to the Operating Engineers and worked on permit. He later worked for the Boiler Makers Union and the UAW.