By RAY WYCHE

Red Hill Road northeast of Whiteville can now boast of an officially designated knight among its residents.

The Rev. David Hughes spent 47 of his 85 years of life as a Seventh Day Adventist Church minister and missionary, working in three African countries for 15 of those years. As a teacher, founder and director of church schools in Liberia, Nigeria and Ghana, Hughes and his denomination left their marks in nations where as many as 90 percent of the people are unable to read or write.

Along his journey to help people who needed help, Hughes found himself in the middle of a civil war that eventually drove him out of the country and resulted in most of his household possessions being stolen.

In Liberia, Hughes founded and taught in grade schools as well as preached, and for that service, Liberian President V. S. Tubman invested Hughes as a knight of the Republic of Liberia. The investiture ceremony, Hughes says, involved placing a medal on a ribbon around his neck. The award is limited to those people who have performed extraordinary work for the betterment of the Liberian people.

“He stated why the country was doing it,” Hughes says of the investiture rite.

After his return from Africa, Hughes became pastor of churches in California until 1979 when he and his wife Eunice went to serve churches in London, England, where the couple remained for three years.

From London it was back to southern California and service once again as a pastor.

The Hugheses were attending a conference in Asheville when they extended their trip to Whiteville to visit their son and daughter-in-law, Leon and Dr. Charlotte Verrett. It was spring, a time of blooming flowers and comfortable weather when they arrived. The visitors saw Columbus County as a pleasant place at a pleasant time, and retirement time for Hughes was approaching.

“My husband said, ‘We’re going to retire in North Carolina.’ He said it reminded him of Africa,” Eunice Hughes says.

In 1995, the couple moved to Red Hill Road and immediately became active in volunteer work in Seventh Day Adventist schools in Council and in Whiteville, where a new facility is nearing completion.

Eunice Hughes retired from Southeastern Mental Health where she worked with developmentally disadvantaged children. She and her husband now serve as chaplains for Signet Healthcare of Whiteville, where their daughter-in-law practices medicine with Dr. Richard Berry.

His service as a missionary in Africa fulfilled a boyhood dream of Hughes. He began work on the continent in 1953, after service in the U. S. Navy in World War II and graduation from college.

He stayed in Liberia for six years and then applied for permission from the Nigerian government to work in that country. The Nigerian government put forth a condition for his entry.

“We’ll let you come in if you will put a school here,” Hughes says he was told. One of his reasons for wanting to go to Nigeria was to set up a school.

Hughes soon found himself in the midst of a civil war, with a Muslim faction facing Christians and others with whom they shared the government of the nation. The Muslims particularly targeted members of the Ibo tribe, some of whom were teachers in Hughes’ school.

“I started shipping my stuff back but the insurgents (Muslims) took everything off the wharf,” he says, where his possessions were waiting to be loaded aboard a ship. Hughes was able to get out of the country via airplane with only a suitcase and a few items he had accumulated during his five years in Nigeria.

Members of the Ibo tribe were fleeing for their lives, hiding wherever they could. Two Ibo teachers in Hughes’ school came to his house seeking safety.

“They (the insurgents) came to get those two Christians. The commander said, ‘We don’t want to make a man of God lie, but where are the Ibos?’ Hughes recalls.

“The commander said he would be back later,” Hughes says, and he knew that this time the house would be searched for the wanted Ibos.

Hughes and the two teachers removed the bottoms from drawers in a dresser so the two men could crouch out of sight inside the cramped space of the dresser

“The commander came back and they looked in the attic and closets—everywhere,” but without success, Hughes says.

The tranquility of Red Hill Road is far different from the turmoil Hughes faced in Nigeria, and the location is well suited for his daily two-mile walks. A trim and slender 85 years old, Hughes, a vegetarian, has always preached about staying physically fit. When he was 70 years of age, he did the improbable: he ran and completed a standard 26.5-mile marathon in California.

“I was preaching, ‘Take care of yourself’ so I had to show I could do it,” he says.