Soon after his ordination in 1950, Father Charlie Hughes baptized his first convert—a man on death row in the Georgia State Prison, soon to die in the electric chair. For three weeks, he instructed the inmate daily. The day before his death, the inmate was baptized; the day of the execution, he made his First Communion.

As a student in his native Brooklyn, N.Y., Father Charlie says he had some last-minute doubts about going to seminary and made a deal with God: If he failed Latin, it meant he wasn’t meant to be a priest. He didn’t flunk. But that "deal" returned to him as he was driving home from the execution; he remembers saying to himself: "Wow! Are you lucky you didn’t flunk Latin."

Being a part of that inmate’s journey was just one of the many graces Father Charlie has received in his 50 years in Glenmary. On that same drive home he remembers thinking, "Whatever price you had to pay for being a Glenmary missioner or would have to pay to keep the ministry going, it was worth it."

"I still think so," he adds.

A senior member now living in Waynesboro, Ga., Father Charlie first learned of the Glenmary Home Missioners through a Glenmary Challenge in his college library. This son of parents from rural Ireland had two career options: to be a priest or a farmer. After reading Father Bishop’s pamphlet Call to Battle, he got the notion that Glenmary’s ministry to rural America would give him the opportunity to "have his cake and eat it too."

His years of ministry with Glenmary have included service in the missions in Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He also taught at St. Meinrad Seminary and the now-closed St. Louis University School of Divinity. And he was the first president of Glenmary to be elected by popular vote in 1971. (Prior to 1971, the superior/president was elected by the General Chapter.)

Some of his teaching and study took him away from rural areas to cities such as Chicago and Rome. But, he says, "I don’t remember being disappointed in this because I always considered it a part of Glenmary’s mission."

But perhaps most memorable to him are the experiences of tent-preaching in Georgia. "We would knock on doors of strangers to find out if any Catholics lived here," he remembers. "Those experiences pretty well exemplified for me what I had imagined life with Glenmary would be like."

Over the years, he gained a reputation as a preacher because of his use of visual aids: He used everything from homemade applesauce, balloons, bubbles, mirrors—anything to "get people’s attention so they could more easily remember a particular lesson or teaching."

Father Charlie’s term as president in the early 1970s came at a time when religious vocations began to fall off and men and women were leaving Church ministry. It was a challenging time, he says, but also a time of growth for Glenmary in the way personnel issues were handled as well as how liturgical changes following Vatican II were implemented and understood.

Throughout his ministry Father Charlie has dealt with a gradual loss of hearing. Today, he is almost completely deaf.

"My hearing loss has definitely been a handicap, but at the same time there are aspects of it that have been remarkable blessings and a source of joy that could not have come in any other way," he says.

His deafness has given him the opportunity to become more reflective, he emphasizes. Through exterior and interior silence, "I have learned to be conscious of the Lord’s presence to and within me." He walks each morning. This is an hour "filled with prayer which I don’t know would have been part of my story if I had not become deaf."

Through his ministry as well as his deafness, he has sounded a resounding yes to God’s call through Glenmary. "It’s a blessing that comes from merely saying Amen to being deaf in union with Jesus on the cross," he says. "Father, thy will be done. Yes, amen, alleluia."