06/21/2026
In Honor of Dr. Paul W. Hughes (1918-1987) — Father's Day 2026
From the time he was five years old, my father knew exactly who he was meant to be. That clarity of purpose — that unwavering sense of calling — is perhaps the first great lesson he gave me, long before I was old enough to understand it.
Dr. Paul W. Hughes was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1918, and from his earliest days he was driven by something most people spend a lifetime searching for: a genuine hunger to serve. While other kids were playing hooky, he was reading the Book of Knowledge cover to cover. While others rested, he was building — building knowledge, building skill, building the kind of character that would eventually build an entire public health system from the ground up.
He earned his way through Keystone Junior College, Bucknell University, and Yale Medical School. He interned at St. Mary's Hospital in Brooklyn, served his country with the Second Marine Division in World War II, and then — quietly, without fanfare — came to Florida and got to work. He rose through the ranks of public health, earned his master's degree, and in May of 1949, walked into a condemned building with twelve employees and became Broward County's Health Director.
What he built from there still humbles me.
Over the next twenty-five years, he grew that department from 12 people to 256, while Broward County itself grew from 80,000 residents to nearly 800,000. He guided his community through epidemic scares — tuberculosis, typhoid, diphtheria, polio — and into an era of modern public health. He did it with what his colleagues called a refusal to mince words. He had bosses. He had battles. But he always stuck to his guns when he knew he was right. He became the longest-serving health officer in the State of Florida, and in 1970 the Public Health Association honored him with the Meritorious Service Award.
But here is what I want the world to know about my father beyond the titles and the tenure: he loved deeply and he lived fully. He tended a vegetable garden with the same devotion he brought to public service. He developed his own recipes — low fat, low cholesterol, ahead of his time in that too. He rode his bicycle around Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport at 5:30 in the morning. He played tennis. He played golf. And every evening, he came home to my mother Nina, his wife of 35 years, who laughingly told people they had to build a special bookcase just to hold all the books he'd read.
He raised three daughters who shared his love of books, his love of learning, and his belief that the things worth doing are rarely the easy ones.
I have spent more than thirty years as a board-certified marital and family law attorney and AAML Fellow, and I have tried — every single day — to bring to my clients and my community the same standard my father brought to his: intellectual rigor, moral courage, and the willingness to say the hard thing when it needs to be said.
Everything I am as an attorney, as a professional, as a woman — I learned from watching him.
Happy Father's Day, Dad. The world was better for your work in it. And I am better for being your daughter.
— Allyson Hughes
