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93-year-old driver dies after crash into tree

With reading, yard work and bingo, the grandmother of 26 was "active right up to the second she died."

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published March 29, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Anna Hunter Hughes, a 93-year-old great-grandmother, was known as the "Bingo Queen."

As usual, Mrs. Hughes was at the Disabled American Veterans bingo hall on Cortez Boulevard on Monday night. She left in her 1995 Chevy van, but she never made it home.

The Florida Highway Patrol said Mrs. Hughes failed to stop at the intersection of Arizona Street and Forzando Avenue about 10:45 p.m. and plowed into a tree. She was pronounced dead at Brooksville Regional Hospital.

Her son, Samuel T. Hunter, the baby of the family at 59 years old, described the crash in simpler terms:

"On the way home from bingo, she miscalculated and died. . . . The steering wheel hit her right in the chest," he said. "She was active right up to the second she died."

During 93 years of life and two marriages, Anna Hughes had seven children and 26 grandchildren.

She was born in Hanover, Germany, and moved to Port Huron, Mich., as a girl. All her working life, she was a cafeteria cook for various colleges in Michigan, her son said.

In her 50s, she had a heart attack but kept living independently until last month when she moved from her home on Elgin Boulevard to her son's house on Casson Street, about a mile from the scene of the crash.

Despite her age, she stayed busy. She hung the laundry on the line. She straightened up the yard of her son's house. She liked to read.

But most of all, she loved bingo. After the death of her first husband, she met her second husband, John Hughes, at a bingo hall on U.S. 19. The two were married in that same hall, Hunter said.

"She was just a down-to-earth, fun-loving woman unless you p----- her off," her son said. "Her favorite saying is, "Don't take no rubber nickels because they bounce.' "

Mrs. Hughes' former neighbor on Elgin Boulevard, Kathy Delp, used to help her out whenever she could.

The two women had a sign. Mrs. Hughes was supposed to raise the blinds in the back of her house each morning if everything was okay.

At nights when Mrs. Hughes drove to bingo, Delp would lie awake worrying until she heard Mrs. Hughes get back from the bingo hall.

"It was like having a kid," Delp said.

No one expected her to die in a car accident. By all accounts she was a good driver.

Her son, Samuel, sat on his back porch Tuesday grieving and philosophizing.

"Love 'em while you got 'em," he said. "They leave an empty space when they're gone."

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or 352 754-6114.

[Last modified March 29, 2006, 01:23:20]