Harry Wayne Hughes

Harry Wayne Hughes, age 82, of Amarillo, Texas, passed on Wednesday, April 22nd, surrounded by his family after a courageous battle with throat cancer.

He was born in White Deer, Texas, on May 15, 1943. As a kid, he gravitated towards chess, reading, acting, writing, and history, signaling a lifelong love of the creative and the curious.

Wayne graduated from White Deer High School in 1961, where he was acutely involved in student activities – football, basketball, track, chorus, extemporaneous speech, Student Council, FTA, and the Junior Historian Club. His White Deer Bucks team won the school’s first Class A Texas State High School Football Championship in 1958; he played both ways, playing pretty much every down, as the team’s nose tackle and center. He also earned his Eagle Scout.

He attended Amarillo College from 1961-62 and completed his BS in Journalism & Public Relations with a Broadcast Journalism Minor at West Texas State in 1967. Wayne was a First Lieutenant in the US Army. During his tour from November 1968 to October 1969, he served as a combat photographer for the service’s Press and Transport Corps, where he was stationed at Long Binh.

Upon his return from Vietnam, he worked at KGNC Television as a roving investigative reporter, followed by a brief stint in quality control at Owens Corning. He then worked in communications for the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce before a move to the Panhandle Regional Planning Commission. He spent the majority of his career as the Executive Director of the Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners Association (PPROA), working with independent oil producers in the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma Panhandle, and Eastern New Mexico.

Wayne and Linda married on February 20, 1971, at First Presbyterian Church in Amarillo, and recently celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary. Their son, Kris, attended Tascosa High School in Amarillo and currently lives in Austin with his wife Julie Fiore, also from Amarillo.

Wayne was a true polymath. He deeply loved reading science fiction (or anything that piqued his interest), woodworking and creating acrylic art in his shop at home, learning about technology and science, and spending time in Northern New Mexico with Linda.

He also loved the theatre, both on stage and off. Starting in high school, he acted and stage-managed for many productions with Amarillo Little Theatre, Amarillo College, and in the summer musical Texas. He was a frequent fixture behind the scenes of the Amarillo College Theatre School for Children (ACTS), run by his wife Linda, throughout its long run as part of the Amarillo College system.

A self-described “inveterate eavesdropper with an ear for the mundane, everyday conversations between average people,” he drew upon his natural storytelling abilities to author the Jerrod book series, using White Deer and the surrounding area as inspiration. Set in the fictional West Texas town of Jerrod, his books Kilborn, Time Lost, The Carousel Effect, McTague, Espinoza, and the yet-to-be-published Sages have won multiple Amazon best-seller awards in the small town fiction niche over the past 10 years.

His dry wit and sense of humor were legendary. He used to joke that the “Home of Wayne Hughes” sign was always under repair in White Deer, and that’s why none of us had ever seen it. He would indiscriminately yell “rebound!” during his son’s varsity basketball games, regardless of what was happening on the court. He had a way of warming each room he’d inhabit, and making ordinary, everyday moments interesting.

Wayne was preceded in death by his parents, Harry Irvin Hughes and Lois Hinton Hughes, and a nephew, Ben Powell. He is survived by his wife, Linda Dee Hughes of Amarillo, his son Kris Hughes and wife Julie Fiore of Austin; his sisters Susie Powell (and husband Mike) and Jean Hughes, all of Richardson, Texas; his brother-in-law Richard Dee of Kooskia, Idaho; three nieces (Marilyn Powell, Shannon Dee, and Diana Green) and a nephew (Robert Dee).In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the following organizations:

1. MD Anderson Cancer Center: https://www.mdanderson.org/donors-volunteers/donate/honor-loved-ones.html - please note here that we would like people to request that the donations be specifically allocated to the Compound 1 cancer drug research project in tandem with the University of Texas Medical Center

2. St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital - https://www.stjude.org/promotion/impact-giving-pm.html

3. High Plains Public Radio - https://bit.ly/hpprdonation

A private family memorial is scheduled. Wayne will be deeply missed by all who loved him. His immense spirit will forever live on in our hearts.

We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as if leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. - Alan Watts