DALLAS – John Franklin Huffhines passed away peacefully on Friday, November 18, 2016 in Weatherford, TX, where he had lived since December 2015.
MEMORIAL SERVICE: A memorial Service will be held on Saturday, December 10, 2016, at 2:00PM at Spring Valley United Methodist Church located at 7700 Spring Valley Road, Dallas, Texas.
MEMORIAL: In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made for wounded Marines to Semper Fi Fund 825 College Blvd, Suite 102 PMB 609 Oceanside, CA 92057
John was born March 7, 1925, in Dallas, Texas to Marvin and Chappell Huffhines. His great-great grandfather brought his family from Kentucky and settled in the southwest area of Richardson in 1851. As a young boy living in Richardson, John chopped cotton and plowed behind mules in his father’s cotton field on the banks of White Rock Creek near the present day intersection of Hillcrest and Alpha Roads. Hard work in the cotton field and later in his father’s truck farm business convinced John to do anything else in life but farming.
John joined the Marine Corps prior to high school graduation and left for boot camp immediately upon graduation in 1943. He was placed in the 5th Division and was sent to Iwo Jima with his comrades for 36 days. This influenced the rest of his life. After the surrender of Japan the 5th Division occupied Japan for several months in Nagasaki. Upon discharge from the Marines in May of 1946, John returned to Dallas attending North Texas State and then graduating from SMU in 1950 with a degree in accounting.
Living on the same street in 1933, eight year old John would block the sidewalk from a little six year old girl on a bicycle trying to retrieve milk from a neighbor. Seventeen years later in 1950 John married that girl and Mary Harrison became Mrs. John F. Huffhines, a union that lasted 66 years. The marriage of John and Mary was the first inter-marriage between a Huffhines and a Campbell, two of the original five Richardson families that settled the area in 1851.
John’s father Marvin started Huffhines Butane Gas Co. in 1938 serving customers in Dallas and Ellis counties. John worked in the business as a teenager until his senior year at Woodrow Wilson HS in 1943. He worked in the family business throughout college and then in 1950 spent the next 52 years building a successful business until selling it in 2002.
Throughout his career and among many organizations, John served as president of the Oak Cliff Cosmopolitan Club, Hutchins Chamber of Commerce, Texas Propane Gas Assn and the Fifth Marine Division Assn. He served as a Texas director to the National Propane Gas Assn and as a director of South Central Bank of Oak Cliff. John was active in the Big D detachment of the Marine Corps League, a member of the Methodist Church since 1935 and chairman of Huffhines Gas and Carburetion Equipment Inc.
John was an amazing man, husband, father, friend, and Marine. He and his kind were the definition of the “Greatest Generation”. John loved his family. He was passionate about his Country. He made us all laugh with his great sense of humor. We honor him for his integrity. We will remember him for all these things.
SURVIVORS: John is survived by his wife of 66 years Mary Huffhines, his daughter Terrie Williams and husband Jody, and son Thomas Huffhines and wife Terri. Grandchildren Amy Williams, John Huffhines and Toni H. DeRouen and husband Cameron. Brother Clark Huffhines, Sister Elizabeth Morris, brother-in-law Eldon Harrison and wife Peggy and numerous loving cousins, nieces, nephews and friends.
