Lt. Col. William N. Hughes Jr.

[ironputts]

November 5, 2023

Lt. Col. William N. Hughes Jr.
Headquarters
Northeast Region

William Noble Hughes, Jr, age 80, of Walworth, passed away at Rochester General Hospital on Sunday October 29th.

He was born on February 25,1943 in Dubuque Iowa a son to the late William Noble Hughes and Lois Jane Musselman
He grew up on the family farm in Warren Illinois where he learned to feed and take care of animals.
His mother was a teacher and he attended a one room school house for a year. He was a 1961 graduate of Warren School.

He loved to read Popular Science and was very interested in electronics. It was in this magazine that he learned about an electronic program at DeVry Technical Institute.

He attended DeVry in Chicago, graduating 2nd in his class in 1963.

While it wasn't his dream job, he received a job offer from Xerox Corporate in Rochester, NY and moved here to start working in June 1963.He began working on copiers by designing electronic parts. He moved up in the company, becoming a manager in 1968. He would head up several Xerox copier products, including the 1999 product line. He traveled around the world for Xerox while managing copier production. He would move from the copier side to the technology side in 1999. He would oversee the EDS contract and the year 2000 conversion. He would remain on the technology side heading up various projects and eventually would be in charge of the Xerox servers, developer servers and xerox.com. He retired in 2009 after a 46 year career.

In 1980, he decided to learn to fly and joined the Palmyra Flight Club. He learned to fly off a grass strip and would buy his first airplane, a Cessna 152. Through his love of flying, he would fly his family to and from Illinois several times. He loved to fly the various CAP planes, his wife's planes and the club's planes. In 1981 Bill joined the Civil Air Patrol, along with many other members they started the Palmyra Squadron, he became the Commander of that unit. Bill was active in the emergency service as a ground team member and later become a mission pilot. He trained in becoming a mission coordinator (Incident commander). He attended the Island search and rescue course at Governors Island. He helped in combining the Palmyra Squadron with the Rochester Cadet Squadron and formed the Rochester Composite Squadron. As a composite squadron, he would become more interested in Aerospace and cadet programs. He became the Rochester Group Commander (Finger lakes Group) in 1996 serving until 1999. He joined the New York Wing staff as a member of the Emergency Service staff and became Director of Operations (serving until 2016). He was part of the national IT team in 2001 and would remain as it's leader until 2017. As part of this team, he would CAP move into computer based system, including eServices. He would receive many awards for the work that he did. Lt Col Hughes served our Total Force partners in the Air National Guard by being the program coordinator for the MQ-9 escort mission, which was run out of the 174th Attack Wing at Hancock Field in Syracuse. In this capacity, he coordinated personnel and aircraft from across the CAP enterprise to support the ANG flying MQ-9s from Hancock Field to military airspace, being escorted by CAP aircraft. His efforts garnered national attention on both the CAP and USAF fronts. Lt Col Hughes put in tremendous time and effort to ensure this mission was accomplished. Bill and Diane would fly almost a thousand hours around the Northeast for CAP through the years. They would travel around the country attending CAP events, where he would support National Headquarters at various events as the IT chairman.

He has supported the NYW encampments since 1995 and the NYW Flight Academy since 2007. He was the primary ground instructor for the NYW FA, teaching the students how to pass their FAA written and providing administrative assistance, tracking money and working with FBO.Bill loved to help out members, both cadets and seniors, so they could learn about aerospace or emergency services. He was a wonderful mentor to many people.

In all of his hours of flying, he would have only one issue. A maintenance airplane being flown back from New Jersey would suffer a catastrophic engine failure. Bill would successfully land the airplane in a farmers cornfield with no damage. He would receive the Distinguished Aviator Award as a result.

Bill is survived by his wife: Diane whom he married in 1997, 2 children: Christine (John) Whitbourne of Ontario and William (Regina) Hughes of West Bloomfield 2 grandchildren: Makena and Colton Whitborne, a sister: Carol (Robert) Luning of Ill., the mother of his children: Laurie (Hermanowki) Hughes, mother-in-law: Betty Wojtowicz of Perry, sister-in-law: Susan Wojtowicz of Perry, nieces: Cheri (Jim) Robinson, Emily Brueser, nephew: Tony (Pam) Luning, along with many friends and his many dear cats.

Along with his parents Bill is preceded in death by a father-in-law: Edwin Wojtowicz.