Florence Virginia Wallingford Hughes was born on November 6th 2028  in Hempstead Tx. She passed away on September 3rd 2025.

Florence was the daughter of Annie Eleanor and Homer DeWeese Wallingford and was born in a farmhouse outside Hempstead TX where she joined her 3 year old sister Laverne. Homer was the foreman over a large farm in the area growing  cotton, peanuts and later on watermelons.  When she started school Homer and Annie bought a house in town to lessen the traveling over bad roads in the country.  She went to the schools in Hempstead and graduated  high school at the age of 16 in 1945.  She began college at Southwestern University in Georgetown TX that year.

After one year in Georgetown she transferred to Sam Houston State College in Huntsville.  There she joined a social sorority called The Philos and several of her fellow members became lifelong friends. It was also there in 1946 that she met the football playing Marine, back from the war, Travis Thurman (Shorty) Hughes.  Romance blossomed quickly and one year later Florence (who most everyone called Flonnie) and Shorty were married at the First Baptist Church in Hempstead on June 27th 1947.  (Shorty never knew what their anniversary date was…on their first anniversary Flonnie wondered what they might do but Shorty solved that mystery when he told her he was going fishing.)  Their union started a long marriage with many different moves and locations.

About a year after their marriage the family grew with the birth of Donna Kay on July 29, 1948.  So their next year at Sam was very different from the previous ones.

After Sam Houston, Shorty's first coaching job was at the high school in Humble Tx.  There they made some lifelong friends like Dottie and Mac McDonald and Connie and Wayne Robbins.The family also grew when Betty Sue was born on Sept 15, 1950

From Humble they moved to Deer Park TX  where Shorty's Deer Park Deer were undefeated and won state championships in 1954 and 1955.  And Florence became a substitute teacher and enjoyed making the extra income to keep her girls well dressed and to pay for summer vacation trips to California and Colorado.

From Deer Park they moved to Bryan where Shorty was recruited to be an assistant coach at A&M under Jim Myers in 1959. Florence and the girls said the best thing about living in Bryan was they were close to Navasota where Florence's sister Laverne and her daughters Ruth Ann and Marilyn lived. And also close to Hempstead where her parents still lived.Unfortunately the Aggies continued to lose too many games and Myers and his staff were fired in 1961.

About this time the Stephen F Austin State College Lumberjacks in Nacogdoches were in the market for a new Head Coach and Athletic Director. Shorty did not pursue the job but SFA contacted him and he interviewed and was hired. So Florence and the girls packed up and moved again.

Florence loved Nacogdoches, and she and the girls quickly made many new friends.  But in the midst of those happy times a terrible thing happened to Florence and her family.  On November 27, 1963 (the day before Thanksgiving) her beloved father was killed in a car wreck. It was a devastating blow to her and the whole family.

She and Shorty were dreamers and together they could make dreams come true.  They were always buying or building and decorating new homes. In 1965 Kay was 17 and Sue was 15 when they welcomed a baby brother.  Travis Keith was born on July 13.  Shorty  always referred to Keith as their "Fall crop".After Shorty's football coaching career ended in Nacogdoches, they bought land and developed new home sites in Nacogdoches (the 100 acres), on Lake Sam Rayburn and Lake Nacogdoches. They built a lake house in the Sam Rayburn development and the house next door was owned at different times by Shorty's brother Harold and wife Georgia and Florence's sister Laverne and her husband John Etheredge.

But after a few years wanderlust struck again and they moved to Clear Lake TX in 1979.  They picked the place so Shorty could be close to the saltwater fishing in the area and so Keith could attend the highly rated high school. They lived in Taylor Lake Village where a number of the astronauts lived and they met and became friends with several of them.  They also became very good friends with Ruth and Jim Armour,  and their son Wes and Keith became very good friends too. The six of them went on a vacation to Hawaii, and Florence said that might have been her favorite trip ever.

They learned of an older very large home for sale in nearby Dickinson, and they were soon moving again. This latest house was on several acres and backed up to Dickinson Bayou where there was a dock and boathouse.  It had a shady past having been owned by one of the Maceo brothers, known as leaders of the gambling syndicate in nearby Galveston from the 1920's to the 1950's.   Florence just knew they were going to find a big stash of cash hidden in the house or the several outbuildings but unfortunately it never happened.

After several years in Dickinson they decided to move back to Nacogdoches. They were soon involved in by far their biggestremodeling effort. In 1988 they bought an abandoned classichome known as the Steamboat House.  The two-story house was cut into nine large sections and moved to a location about a mile away where they supervised it being put back together, and then a complete restoration of the house. It became a wonderful new home for them, and it was adjacent to her daughter Sue's house, so Florence was close to Sue's two children and loved watching them grow up. She and Shorty received thanks from many Nacogdoches residents for saving the architecturally significant home. The home had been built in 1898 and was designed in the Queen Anne style by noted architect Dietrich Rulfs.

They loved the Steamboat House and enjoyed it tremendously for about a dozen years until Shorty began showing early signs of dementia.  Florence could not handle the constant upkeep and cleaning of such a large house by herself and made the very difficult decision to put it on the market.  She and Shorty moved to a much smaller house that was only 2 blocks away.  Shorty's condition continued to worsen and he passed away on June 6, 2003.

After living several more years alone in Nacogdoches she announced to her children that she was moving to Liberty TX. She only knew one person in Liberty.  She said she picked Liberty on the map because it looked like it was about equidistant from where her three children lived.  In typical fashion she bought a large home with a big yard and proceeded to begin remodeling and redecorating it. She joined the Liberty Country Club "to have a nice place to eat" and joined a local church and began making new friends.

After several years she declared that Liberty was too far from the beach and sold her Liberty house and moved to Crystal Beach.  She got a small little house that was a few blocks from the beach and soon had a beautiful yard with all kinds of plants and flowers. She hosted the whole family for Thanksgiving in that little house and it was a great time.  But her eyesight began to decline and it was no longer safe for her to continue to drive. So she moved to an apartment complex for seniors in Houston near where daughter Kay lived. The move included about 25 pots of plants and flowers!  After a couple of years she declared she was not meant to be in the big city so we helped her move to Galveston where daughter Sue lived.  She was in a small single family house but her physical condition worsened and we helped her move to an assisted living facility in the Clear Lake area,

One thing that Florence loved and thoroughly enjoyed for over 40 years were the annual Cooke Family reunions where she could see and visit with all of her aunts and uncles and cousins on her mother's side and their spouses and children.  We are so glad that despite her advancing dementia she was able to attend the one last October near Washington on the Brazos and visit with so many that loved her.

Florence accomplished many things in her almost 97 years.

She loved being a hostess and having friends and relatives to entertain in her home.

She was an entrepreneur – she and daughter Sue bought a house in Nacogdoches across the street from the SFA campus and converted it to a very successful women's clothing and shoe store. She also bought and sold antiques.

Flonnie always loved the beach. In about 1984 she and Shorty partnered with their good friends Norma and Charlie Mack McDonald and bought a little beach house in Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula.  It became the family destination for several generations for summer vacations and though it was destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008, their son Keith rebuilt it much better, and it is still a great destination for all the family she has left behind.

Her last two years were in the assisted living and memory care  facility. She was moved to hospice shortly before her passing. When I called her facility at Clear Lake to let them know of her passing, the Executive Director said  "I want to send our deepest condolences to you and the entire family. Florence will be truly missed. She was a firecracker and kept us on our toes."

Florence told her children repeatedly in her last months "I'm ready to go see Shorty."

Rest in Peace Florence.

Memorial contributions can be made to:

https://www.alz.org/get-involved-now/donate

https://www.macular.org/want-to-help/donate