Los
Angeles County
Biographies
RUTH BATEY HUGHES
The
reason that the state of California has such excellent women’s labor laws is
that some people have enough ability and care enough to fight for such
laws. Since 1941 Ruth Batey Hughes has
done a great deal of lobbying in Sacramento on many bills for women, child
care, and equal pay for equal work; Equal Rights Bill. A native of England, Mrs. Hughes has been a
legal secretary in this country for many years and has studied at Southwestern
University Law School in Los Angeles to become a lawyer, expecting to receive
her degree in about two years.
Born
on January 23, 1903, in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, Ruth Batey Hughes is the
daughter of John William and Helen Elizabeth (Wells) Batey. Mrs. Hughes’ father, a former Alhambra
resident who died in 1917, was a painting contractor. Her mother, who later married John Henry
Wilkinson, still lives in Alhambra; Mr. Wilkinson passed away in 1954. Mrs. Hughes and her sister and two brothers
all received their elementary education at Granada School in Alhambra and
graduated from Alhambra High School. Her
sister, Isabel Batey Hixson, lives in Pennsylvania; she is an artist who has
displayed her work, landscape and portrait paintings, in Paris, London,
Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states.
Mrs. Hixson’s husband is a retired United States Air Force Colonel. One brother, Hartley Batey, is associated
with the Alhambra Post Office; the other brother, John Douglas Batey, lives in
Costa Mesa. When Mrs. Hughes was a young
child the Batey family left England and went to Canada. From there they moved to California in 1907,
first taking up residence in Hermosa Beach, and in 1916 moving to
Alhambra. Mrs. Hughes’ early ancestors
were related to the Batey’s of northern England and they all seemed dedicated
to instruction, either as teachers or lawyers; the early Batey’s were a long
line of molders. One family of Batey’s
has had the tug service on the River Tyne since 1836.
After
her graduation from Alhambra High School in 1921, Mrs. Hughes was employed at
the Alhambra Savings and Commercial Bank at First and Main Streets, which later
became the Pacific Southwest Trust and Savings Bank and is now Security First
National Bank. In 1925 after leaving the
bank and working as a secretary for the C. F. Braun Company for one year, Mrs.
Hughes went into law work as a legal secretary for sixteen years to Roland T.
Williams and Rosalind G. Bates. In 1951 Mrs.
Hughes became associated with the City Attorney’s office in Alhambra as a legal
secretary and worked first for Emmett A. Tompkins and now works for Earl D.
Murphy.
At
John H. Frances Polytechnic High School Mrs. Hughes taught adult education
evening classes for legal secretaries in 1943 – 1944, and assisted the University
of Southern California in establishing a legal secretary’s class as part of its
business administration course.
In
relation to her professional capacity, Mrs. Hughes is a charter member and past
president of the Los Angeles Legal Secretaries Association as well as past
governor for that group, and state parliamentarian for Los Angeles Legal
Secretaries, Incorporated. For two
years, 1944 – 1945, Mrs. Hughes was president of the Los Angeles Business
Women’s Council, and was for two years state president of the California
Presidents’ Council in 1948 – 1949. She
was president of the Soroptimist Club of Alhambra in 1956 and represented that
organization at its national convention in New York that same year. Currently a member of the San Gabriel Valley
Legal Secretaries Association, Mrs. Hughes represented that group at a national
convention in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1956.
Affiliated with Iota Tau Tau, an international
women’s legal sorority, of which Mrs. Hughes is a past dean of Alpha Chapter in
Los Angeles, of this sorority; she also holds life and honorary memberships in
the Los Angeles Legal Secretaries Association, and is an associate member of
International Women Lawyers.
Also
identifying herself with Alhambra affairs, Mrs. Hughes
is a member of the Alhambra Coordinating Council, publicity chairman at
Alhambra High School for exchange students, a member of the Alhambra Business
and Professional Women’s Club, and is a member of the Alhambra Christian
Science Church. She is also a member of
the National Women’s Party in Washington, D. C.
In
a church ceremony on December 31, 1927, the former Miss Ruth Helena Batey was
married to Clyde Owen Hughes in Los Angeles at the Church of the Angels. Mr. Hughes owned the Valley Tractor Supply
Company in Rosemead and is a thirty-second degree Mason and past master of the
Euclid Lodge, Number 519, of the Masonic Order in Los Angeles; he is also a
Shriner. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes are the
parents of a son, John Batey Hughes, who was born in 1946. He is in his first year of high school in
Costa Mesa, having been graduated from Martha Baldwin Elementary School in
Alhambra. The Hughes family owns a boat
and enjoys deep sea fishing.
Transcribed by
V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
Historical Volume & Reference Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park,
Rosemead, San Gabriel & Temple City, by Robert P. Studer,
Pages 737-740, Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California. 1962.
© 2013 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPHIES