Phyllis J. (Pankonin) Hughes, 93
Phyllis Jean Pankonin Hughes
November 10, 1930 - July 11, 2024
Phyllis Jean Pankonin was born on 10 November 1930 in Holyoke, Colorado, even though her parents, Herman Louis Pankonin and Margaret Emily Logan Pankonin, lived in Grant, Nebraska, pop. 798, next door to maternal matriarch Emma Loretta (Hull) Logan.
With twin brother Carl, Herman ran Pankonin Bros. garage and showroom, a town institution begun in the early 1910s by their father Herman, selling and repairing everything from DeSoto autos to Minneapolis-Moline manure spreaders. The Pankonins also farmed, and Phyllis recalled taking food to the harvest hands. She and her younger sister Shirley would continue to farm wheat until 1993.
As she was growing up Phyllis claimed to have read every book in the town’s library. After high school she attended Colorado Women’s College in Denver followed by CU in Boulder, graduating with an educator’s degree in 1952.
In 1948 Phyllis was introduced to her future husband Robert “Bob” Donald Hughes by her cousin Wayne Holaway. The two married on 30 November 1952 in Grant while Bob was on leave from the U.S. Army. They moved to Camp Roberts in California before Bob was shipped off to Korea in August 1953, with Phyllis teaching elementary school in Denver.
Upon discharge in April of ’54 Bob returned to the University of Wyoming that fall in Laramie, where their son Mark David was born in 1955. Son Richard Willis II followed two years later while they lived in Marion, Ohio, where Bob worked as a quality control manager for Whirlpool. In 1958 they moved to Cheyenne, where Phyllis taught primary school and Bob owned the National Auto Parts Association (NAPA) store with his brother Richard Willis Hughes I. In 1964 they moved to Boulder after Bob bought the local NAPA store.
At about the time David graduated high school in 1973, Phyllis immersed herself in genealogy, researching both her and Bob’s lines. In 1985 she became the inaugural (and only) genealogist for the second incarnation of the Hull Family Association, dedicated to her grandmother’s surname. Phyllis wrote for and edited the HFA Newsletter and Journal, correcting errors and ruffling feathers along the way. Ironically it was relatively late in her career, in 2011, that she helped solve, with DNA corroboration, a twenty+-year-old question that had affected the lineage of dozens of HFA members. Her 700+-volume Hull collection resides at the Denver Public Library.
In addition to her Hull work, Phyllis also documented Pankonin family histories as well as contributed to Robert Richter and Larry Gauthier’s Plainscape: A Portrait of Perkins County
(1987). She also was integral in programming for numerous Pankonin reunions in Grant.
Phyllis enjoyed crafting, bridge, stamp and brass collecting, entertaining, and reading nonfiction.
She was involved in the First Congregational Church of Boulder, serving as librarian and historian. Travels—for ancestry and pleasure—took her to 48 states as well as England, Scotland, France, the Germanys, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Burma, and of course Thailand where son Richard makes his home.
In 2002 Phyllis and Bob flew the family to Paris to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, a trip she treasured. In 2022 the pair were feted for their 70th at the home of Richard I’s daughter Suzanne: an afternoon high tea at which Phyllis declared, “No tea for me.”
On Thursday, 11 July 2024, having begun hospice care that Monday, she passed away quietly “of old age” at 93 in Boulder with Bob by her side. Phyllis is survived by husband Bob, son David of Denver, son Richard (Wimon Manorotkul) and granddaughter E. Billie (Simon Sai Dussart) of Bangkok, sister Shirley Koralewski (Tom Leatherwood) of Houston, five nieces, and a nephew. A memorial will take place in December, details to follow.