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He gave the last rites disguised as a golfer, wrote and starred in several local radio programs and took St. Ambrose from an Army barracks to a thriving parish — one bingo card at a time.

"Several hundred people would come. It was held in the youth center and people also played outside and in the classrooms. He had the sound piped in," says Marty Ronstadt, former altar boy and later parishioner to Monsignor Don Hughes, pastor to four Arizona parishes, including St. Ambrose.

Nervous that bingo might be outlawed, Hughes in later years replaced it with a tithing system, says Ronstadt — one that became a national model.

Savvy in business dealings, the monsignor left about $1 million in parish deposits when he retired in 1967. When he died in 1994, proceeds from the sale of his home were used to build the casitas at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish.

And to think it all began with a dastardly deed.

Born in 1905 in Greenwood, Ark., Hughes traveled to Tempe in 1918 with his father, following the death of his uncle, a Tempe farmer. Seems the uncle had been the victim in a murder-for-hire plot involving a farmhand and an ex-convict.

Here, at the farm his dad now owned, young Hughes learned farming while attending school in Tempe.

After graduating in 1926 from what was then Tempe Normal School, he traveled to Kansas to try out as a first baseman with the Topeka Jayhawks, but failed to make the team.

He returned to Arizona and in 1929 became principal of the old Fort Lowell School. Here, a fellow teacher convinced him he'd make a good priest.

After graduating from St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Hughes was ordained in 1936 at St. Augustine Cathedral.

His first assignment: assistant pastor at Sacred Heart Church, in Nogales, Ariz. It was a time when priests were being persecuted and even thrown in jail in Mexico.

Nonetheless, Hughes answered his first sick call across the line, giving the last rites to a dying woman.

In rich, dramatic tones, Hughes later recorded the episode, recalling how a poor Mexican man showed up at Sacred Heart pleading on behalf of his dying wife.

Knowing he dare not appear at the border in his priestly garb, Hughes donned sports clothes, threw his golf clubs in the back of his car and told the authorities at the check station that he was headed for a Mexican golf course.

Waved inside, the priest then met the husband of the dying woman and was taken to their shack, where he administered the last rites.

In 1937, Hughes returned to Tucson as assistant pastor at St. Augustine Cathedral. That same year, he began the Catholic Radio Club, broadcasting a twice-weekly series of 15-minute catechism classes on KVOA Radio to kids in Catholic schools. The program ran for three years.

It was followed in the fall of 1940 with "The Case of Johnny Miller," a 15-minute radio series written by Hughes and Sister Mary Sophia that ran Wednesday nights in Tucson, Phoenix and Bisbee/Douglas.

"As best as I can remember, it was about a young person, Johnny Miller, who had strayed from the path and was saved by Father Don," says Jack Frakes, who played one of Johnny Miller's young friends.

Then 12, Frakes, a non-Catholic, was recruited for the radio show as one of the drama students in Mary MacMurtrie's Tucson Children's Theater.

"We rehearsed right in her living room," says Frakes, who also appeared in MacMurtrie's Saturday radio shows.

"I was the prince who rushed in to save somebody," says Frakes, who would become a high school drama teacher and later drama coordinator for the Tucson Unified School District.

In the early '40s, Hughes served as pastor to All Saints parish in Tucson, as well as parishes in Globe and Douglas.

He returned to Tucson in 1946, founding St. Ambrose that same year. It was the beginning of Tucson's postwar boom, and young families, including Ronstadt's, were flocking to the fledgling church.

"Mass was held in an Army barracks," says Ronstadt, who along with other men of the parish came up with various building projects for the church — all financed with Friday night bingo. "There would be different types of games and a big jackpot game," says Ronstadt.

But later on, says Ronstadt, Hughes began to realize that "bingo could become outlawed. We needed to do something better to keep parish finances up."

The answer was a tithing system in which half went to the parish, the other half to other church needs and to local and national charities.

Even so, bingo did not officially end at the church until 2001.

Hughes offered workshops on tithing in the early '60s and in 1964 presented his program to American bishops meeting in Rome for Vatican Council II.

He retired, still pastor of St. Ambrose, in 1967 but continued to help with the diocese.

More than six decades past his stint as altar boy at All Saints, Ronstadt still recalls one vital lesson Hughes gave to his assistants in the pulpit:

"If you can't get your message across in the first five minutes, you might as well quit."