In 1967, a young Kathleen H. Hughes was in her first year of teaching English at Clearfield (Utah) High School. She recalls a moment she described as "so painful." She received a phone call from the mother of a boy to whom she had given a failing grade.

Photo by Chuck Wing

Kathleen Hughes, with husband, Dean, will serve as first counselor in Relief Society presidency.

"Do you realize he can't read?" the mother asked.

No, the young teacher replied, she hadn't realized.

"It just devastated me to think I would have done that to this boy. I can still see where he sat in my class, sitting back in that corner. It was just so painful to know that without really even knowing this boy, I'd been so harsh on him. I never gave him another F."

She also worked one-on-one with that young man the remainder of the school year — and she decided she wanted to get her education in something "where I can help kids who don't know how to read or for whom school is tough."

From this and myriad other molding moments in her life, Sister Hughes has developed a compassionate nature, which will serve her well as a member of the newly called Relief Society general presidency. She was sustained April 6 during general conference as first counselor to Relief Society General President Bonnie D. Parkin. (Please see May 18, 2002, Church News for profile on Sister Parkin.)

For Sister Hughes, hometown is "everywhere," she said with a chuckle during an interview. Her father's work in forestry took the family to Manila, Logan, Vernal and Ogden, Utah, and to Washington, D.C. The family also lived in Grantsville, Utah, with grandparents while her father served a year with the U.S. military during the American occupation of Japan at the close of World War II.

Her childhood years left vivid memories for Sister Hughes, including watching her father return home covered with soot from fighting forest fires. She also remembers going to Primary on Wednesday afternoons. One day, however, she informed her mother she wasn't going; she was going to her friend's house.

"We were playing and I stepped on a pitchfork and it went clear through my foot. I still have the scar on my foot today," Sister Hughes recalled. "I remember very distinctly the memory, 'Had I minded my mother and been where I was supposed to have been I wouldn't have been hurt.' "

In 1951, the family was living in Vernal, a time Sister Hughes called the "golden years." She started first grade, made her first school friends and played dress-up with cousins. She also remembers getting sugar cookies from her Grandmother Hurst's pantry in Panguitch, Utah.

It was also during these years in Vernal that her father became active in the Church in time to baptize young Kathleen. Two years later, when she was 10, her parents, William Daly and Emma Johanson Hurst, took their four children — with one on the way — to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. "I remember going into that sealing room and everybody dressed in white and Mother and Daddy were around the altar and all of us children kneeling around them."

In 1956, Sister Hughes' father was transferred by the forest service once again, this time to the nation's capital. The family lived in Falls Church, Va., and "took a lot of road trips and saw a lot of things," she said. "I remember being at the inauguration parade of Dwight Eisenhower in 1957. I remember it was a terribly cold day."

During these tender years, Sister Hughes developed her testimony and set a goal to one day marry in the temple. After her family moved back to Utah, she graduated from Weber High School in Ogden and enrolled at Weber State College, from which she received her bachelor's degree. In the meantime, she had met Dean T. Hughes, who many know today as the author of several LDS novels. They were married Nov. 23, 1966, in the Salt Lake Temple and now have three children and five grandchildren.

In their married life, home has, again, been "everywhere." From the University of Washington (Seattle), where Brother Hughes received his graduate degree in English literature, the family headed to Warrensburg, Mo., where Brother Hughes took a teaching job at Central Missouri State University, and where Sister Hughes was accepted into a master's program in special education. A student in a pilot program for working with children with learning disabilities, Sister Hughes was essentially paid to go to school and even received a living stipend.

During these years in Missouri, she went through a period in her life she described as a black cloud — and a time during which she also more fully sought her Heavenly Father. After the birth of their third child, she experienced postpartum depression. "I don't think doctors knew anything about it at the time. It was awful," she recalled.

Her voice cracking, she described praying for peace and struggling to grasp a sense of hope. Then one day, she was visiting the Liberty (Mo.) Jail. Gazing at those bleak walls she thought of Joseph Smith and the 121st and 122nd sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. "I thought, 'If Joseph can do this, then I can do this.' It was really a healing time for me."

To women today who may suffer from depression, Sister Hughes has these words, "Make sure you go to a doctor and get some help. But then use what you know about the Church. Use the gospel as a link, as your iron rod. Search the scriptures."

In these subsequent years, as she raised her children in Missouri and then back in Utah, and worked with children with learning disabilities, her approach to life has been simple. Taken from 1 Corinthians 10:13, she said: "The Lord will not try you beyond your ability to withstand."

Her approach to her new calling is as simple. "I will give it my heart and mind and soul. That's what I have to give."

E-mail: julied@desnews.com