Beech Tree News Network

Because of how easy it has become for someone to use the internet to get their words and opinions out there, it seems as if florid vocabulary in feature articles has gone the way of stone-washed denim. Case-in-point: whenever someone does a feature on another person, the subject is usually considered by the writer to be a "renaissance man (or woman)" if they are able to do two or three things well enough to be worth talking about. Because of this, many of our classic, descriptive adjectives have become obsolete, or , at the very least, devalued. Sometimes, though, you can't avoid generic platitudes because there are no better words to describe the person you're talking about.

Cheryl Hughes is a true renaissance woman.

Those who are familiar with Mrs. Hughes know her as an exuberant individual and a complete extrovert. Those who are not, soon learn these things about her. When asking her about her life and work, it seems not so much an interview with an interesting subject as it is a conversation with an old friend. By the time the dialogue is over, you come to find out that Cheryl's is a mind that never lets its charge rest on her laurels, and that the name of her weekly Beech Tree News article, "My Career as a Woman", is nothing if not apropos.

"I don't understand how people can say that the years go by fast," she said, as she began reminiscing about her past, "I'm fifty-six years-old, but it feels like it's been a million." As a child, it was apparent that Cheryl's mind worked much differently than the average person's. She offered up this small anecdote as an example, "When I was a kid, and would fall down, my mind would be up here, my body back there. My earliest memory is thinking that, 'Hey, I'm alive!' And that was before I could talk."

At the age of thirteen, she learned how to play guitar, which awakened in her the dream of becoming a songwriter. While attending Taylorsville High School in Spencer County, Kentucky, Cheryl developed a love for writing of all kinds, "Writing songs, and just writing in general, is one of the few things that gave me joy, that pleased me," then she thought a second and giggled before saying, "Except poetry. I hate poetry!" She graduated in 1973, and from there attended Western Kentucky University, taking her love of writing and focusing it toward a degree in Journalism.

While attending WKU, she worked part-time at Ray's Restaurant. "This was during the big [racing] boom at Beech Bend, so I made great tips." It was at Ray's in 1974 that she met Gary Hughes, who owned a coal company in Butler County. They were married the next year, and that Fall, Cheryl didn't return to WKU, instead taking up various jobs at Gary's business. Over the next few years, she also began selling ads for Morgantown's local radio station, WLBQ, as well as the local newspaper. Cheryl mused, "I think that I was attracted to radio and the paper because I just wanted to be around what I loved, music and writing. Even if it meant I wasn't a part of the process."

Throughout the years, Cheryl continued to hone her guitar-playing skills and continued to write, eventually contributing to the paper. Even after the births of her daughters Natalie and Nikki (in 1981 and 1985, respectively), she never lost sight of her goals, while putting her new ones in perspective, "I always thought, you know, everything I want to do constitutes another day in my life, but this is their childhood. So, I took it all slow and made sure I was there for them."

After taking lessons with Sharon Law in reading music, Cheryl decided to go back to WKU, this time to pursue a Music degree. She began in 1989, all while balancing her duties as a mother and, eventually, a teacher of music herself, of which she had many beneficiaries. She graduated with her degree in 1995, the culmination of over twenty years of hard work, perseverance, and dedication that very few ever realize.

But, the more you hear about the life and times of Cheryl Hughes, you get the sense that if there were ever a person that could succeed based on their devotion to the task at-hand coupled with their force-of-will, it would be her. "There would be times I would be going on less than four hours of sleep and have to get up and perform classical music at school. But I wasn't going to work so hard just to fail. Being a see-it-through person not only helped me with all of that stuff, but with other things in my life that have come since." This includes her subsequent songwriting endeavors, "Some have been good, some have been cheesy."

But, to say that music is all there is to Cheryl would be a rather large fallacy. Mentioned earlier, she writes a weekly column for BTN entitled "My Career as a Woman", in which she espouses her point-of-view on life, amongst other things. "I love to have to write a weekly column because it makes me write down the important things," she says, "I tend to keep things to myself, and sometimes the only way I can communicate those things is through writing. I wrote a piece in the mid-2000's called 'Dying on the Nest' about the death of my mother, and it was the first time I'd really talked about it since she passed in 1995."

Her "stick-to-itiveness" benefitted her daughter Nikki in 2006, when Cheryl moved to Texas so she could claim residency and get cheaper tuition for Nikki while she was attending Texas A&M, where she was pursuing a degree in Marine Biology (she graduated in 2008). Cheryl says that her motivation to help Nikki by making such a huge life-change was simple, "I never had anyone behind me, pushing me, backing me up. I made a vow that it wasn't going to happen to either of my children. They'd know I was there."

Since returning home in 2008, Cheryl has found the time to not only write for BTN, but also pursue her interests, both new and old. One of her new ventures is "bottle art". She met Sandra Beasley at one of Butler County's recent "Harvest on the Square" events, and was introduced to bottle art at Sandra's display. She was instantly taken, and wanted to learn how to do it. Sandra, whose craft shop is based right outside of Caneyville, is touted by Cheryl as "a creative genius. If she sees it, she can do it."

Taking what she originally learned in the Pacific Northwest, Sandra passed her knowledge of the "slumping" process on to Cheryl. She now has an extensive collection of work, with bottles ranging from liquor, wine, soda, and beer, to others such as syrup. "I have friends who work at restaurants and bars who save the empty bottles for me, then I just do it." She also has nothing but kind words to say about her teacher, saying, "She is one of the kindest, gentlest people I have ever met in my entire life. I just love her."

As if all of her other interests weren't enough to keep her entertained and occupied, she also loves to cook, and considers it another outlet for her creative hunger. "Cooking is just another form of art. You take your ingredients and you blend them together with a specific outcome in mind. It's a great release of creative energy. You also get to eat it, which is another plus!"

While discussing her love of cooking, she happened to stumble upon a few more of her extracurricular interests: playwriting and sewing. She recently attended a playwriting workshop in Horse Cave, and they even staged a reading of what she wrote. "Although it's good," she says, "I still haven't honed it, made it better. I'll get around to it." The sewing came up when she showed me a '60s-style hat she had made her granddaughter Sabria from a pattern. "Writing, music, crafting, cooking, sewing... I think that if I didn't have diversions like those in my life, my head would explode." As if all of this wasn't enough, she's even contemplating writing a book based on and inspired by her BtN articles.

If it isn't evident at this point, Cheryl Hughes is an amazing woman. She's a wife, a mother, a musician, an artist, a writer, a teacher, and a student. She's not only enriched the lives of others, but she's also enriched her own by never forgetting one of life's most important lessons, advocated eloquently in this quote from Maya Angelou: "Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art." And, if life is art, then Cheryl is a master of the craft.

Story and photos by The Hampton Company, Beech Tree News