That launched Hughes into other, bigger conservation projects, including the Volusia Conservation Corridor. “Reid played an important role at a critical time in Florida’s conservation history," Bob Bendick, director of The Nature Conservancy's Gulf Restoration Program, said in an email Henderson shared. "While we mourn his passing, he leaves a lasting legacy of land and water saved.” Building a business But before he got to Florida, Hughes was the son of a single, schoolteacher mother who survived the Texas dust bowl by picking cotton. His oldest daughter, Cyndi Hughes Parker, said he was an athlete and a one-time sportswriter who went to the University of Southern California, then the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.