"Mother" Mary Hughes declares, unconvincingly, that she hopes to retire this year.

Retire after a mere 60-plus years of doing the work that earned her the name "Mother" and accolades of four Georgia governors, two presidents, local governments and more famous people than you can shake an Oscar at.

CHRIS QUINN / cquinn@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Mary Hughes says she'll retire from delivering clothes to the homeless, but her son doesn't think she will.

CHRIS QUINN / cquinn@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Mary Hughes folding clothes that she will give away.

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"She says she's going to let me take over, but I don't believe it," says her son, the Rev. Herbert J. Bridgewater "She will be right there, telling me what to do."

Hughes, 94, gives her son a glance that only mothers can give sons.

Maybe she is telling the truth. Two cracks showed in her shining armor this year.

During the winter when temperatures were plunging, Hughes and Bridgewater drove around handing out clothes and blankets to the homeless. She caught pneumonia. In June, Hughes began hemorrhaging blood internally, and Atlanta nearly lost one of its human institutions. Before Bridgewater could get her to Crawford Long Hospital, she was unconscious.

But three weeks later, she was back at work, her body thinner but her oversized heart having lost not an ounce. From her home off Cascade Avenue, she takes in, washes, drys, folds and boxes clothes for her annual "Christmas in July."

Hughes has worn out three washing machines in recent years getting the clothes ready for distribution.

On July 24, she showed up at two Atlanta shelters for the homeless to give away the boxes that were wrapped in bright Christmas paper.

When Dec. 24 comes, her 95th birthday, she will be back to a dozen or more shelters, handing out hundreds of boxes. That, she said, may be the last giveaway she manages.

Hughes, who keeps her nurses license in order, just in case someone needs her, said she gave out her first two blankets more than 60 years ago when she noticed two homeless men while she was on her way to church.

For some, doing good creates warm feelings. For Hughes, it lit a raging furnace.

Her work grew and grew to the point that churches and people from all over the city and from other counties began bringing her clothes to give away.

She began showing up, along with the Red Cross, at house fires to give clothes to the burned-out families.

Some don't even speak English, Bridgewater said. But they see her coming with clothes and begin crying.

"Tears are an unspoken language," he said.

Hughes' care for the less fortunate grew out of personal experience. She was an orphan by age 2. Neighbors raised her until age 11, when she ran away and lived with friends or acquaintances.

"I've never [stayed] in a shelter, but I've been hungry," Hughes said.

So she decided to give her heart to those who know what she once knew.

"If you talk about someone living out their Christian faith, she is a real serious example of what a Christian person ought to be," said the Rev. T. DeWitt Smith Jr. of Atlanta, president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

Jackye Brown, executive director of the Atlanta Children's Shelter, was Hughes' host for the "Christmas in July" giveaway on a sweltering morning.

"She had on a Santa Claus hat and a Christmas sweater. You have to admire her level of commitment."