Chapel Hill resident is a veteran of two wars with 37 years of service

More than 30 years after his retirement, and 73 years after he first enlisted, Elmer G. Hughes is still an Air Force man at heart.

Hughes, a Chapel Hill resident who was born in Maryland in 1921, is a veteran of World War II and the Korean War.

At 91, Hughes said he still misses the Air Force, and he and his wife are active in the Chapel Hill chapters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion so they can regain some of that culture.

Though Veterans Day was Sunday, Chapel Hill and UNC will honor the nation’s soldiers today.

Lee Heavlin, a district commander of the VFW, said it’s important for the organization to provide support for local veterans.

That can take the form of friendship, fundraising or advocacy for the nation’s poorest veterans.

“We’re veterans’ advocates,” he said.

For Veterans Day, Heavlin said the Chapel Hill VFW cosponsored UNC’s Turkey Trot event and raised money at a local Catholic church to bring hospitalized amputees home for the holidays.

“Because Veterans Day is about living people, we try to get out in the community,” he said.

“We’re out and about —we’re kind of quiet, but we want to put the voice out there.”

Hughes said he received basic training at Langley Field in Virginia and was first stationed in Puerto Rico.

“I was there when the war started,” Hughes said.

Hughes was later stationed in Burma, where he said he was part of the 490th Bomb Squadron, nicknamed the “Bridge Busters.”

“They specialized in dive bombing on bridges,” he said.

Hughes came home in the spring of 1945 after the war in Europe ended, he said.

“It was just before the end of the hostilities in Europe,” he said. “That was it for World War II, so I got out of the service.”

Hughes said coming home was hard because he missed his time in the Air Force.

“It was a transition for almost everybody,” he said.

Hughes said after coming home, he used the GI Bill to attend Salisbury University in Maryland, where he met the love of his life, Kathleen.

But Hughes couldn’t stay away from the Air Force for long.

“After one year, I went back in service,” he said.

Hughes said he was then stationed in Okinawa Island, Japan for a year during the Korean War.

In 1954, he left the service again and returned to school.

Hughes said he and his wife moved to North Carolina to attend UNC, where they were students until 1958.

He didn’t graduate, but said he was interested in journalism.

“We did enjoy Chapel Hill at that time. It was a little village in 1954,” he said.

The couple moved back to Maryland and did not return to North Carolina until 1970, when Kathleen Hughes went back to school.

She graduated from UNC in 1972 and taught elementary school in Hillsborough for 23 years.

In 1976, after 37 years of service, Hughes finally retired from the Air Force.

“Air Force is a very tight organization,” he said.

“We pride ourselves on taking care of our own. The ladies are something special to us.”

He then started his own realty business, The Hughes Agency.

But his heart still longed for the military, he said.

“I would’ve loved to have stayed,” Hughes said.

Kathleen Hughes said she loved the traveling required of a military wife, and she compared it to being in a sorority.

“I loved it,” she said. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

And Elmer Hughes said he wouldn’t trade his time with the Air Force for anything.

“America was growing up,” he said.

“It’s something that we who were there will never forget.”

Contact the desk editor at city@dailytarheel.com.