ATLANTA--Frances L. Bussey Hynes, a founder of the soup kitchen at St. Anthony’s Church in the 1970s, died June 19 at the age of 79.

Mrs. Hynes, a parishioner for 44 years at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta, died at Piedmont Hospital among family from heart failure. She had suffered a mild heart attack June 16.

A funeral Mass was celebrated by Msgr. Thomas Kenny at the cathedral June 23. Interment was at Magnolia Cemetery in her hometown of Augusta.

The mother of 12 children, Mrs. Hynes volunteered as manager of St. Anthony’s soup kitchen five days a week, her children recalled.

“She asked people for donations. She’d go down to the farmers market at five in the morning and fill (baskets) up with food and she’d go over to St. Anthony’s,” said her daughter, Laura Hynes. “I think in many ways she really embodied the spirit of the teachings of the church. She was very devoted (to and) tried to put into practice the teachings of the church...She took the teachings of Christ to heart.”

She was a volunteer for 30 years, beginning in 1960. She also organized a day care program at St. Anthony’s and served the poor in the Atlanta neighborhoods of West End, Buttermilk Bottom and Cabbagetown, taking the sick to hospitals, visiting the elderly in their homes and delivering food. The St. Anthony’s soup kitchen, which is still in operation weekdays, serves over 450 people daily.

Mrs. Hynes also assisted at breakfasts and carnivals for the Knights of Columbus and taught Sunday school in the 1960s at Christ the King.

“She was really a teacher,” her daughter said. “She was someone who loved to show people how to do things. She was always setting an example and enabling people to do their very best. That was really what she was about.”

She also founded and ran for 12 years an interparish Roadrunners Club which took groups of elderly people on over 100 trips throughout America, Europe and the Middle East.

“She loved being the person responsible for these people going around the world,” said her son, David Hynes of Chicago. “They saw things they had never imagined.”

Laura Hynes said that her mother participated in and encouraged other Catholics to attend protest marches and rallies in Atlanta as part of the civil rights movement.

Born in Augusta, she moved to Atlanta as a child and after graduating from Sacred Heart High School in Atlanta, married and began raising her children, two of whom have died. She was the grandmother of 18 and the great-grandmother of four.

Additional survivors include three other sons, Frank, Paul and Joseph Hynes, all of Atlanta; five other daughters, Peggy Hynes, Helen Hynes Pharr and Julia Hynes Lococo, all of Atlanta, Frances Hynes Reifler of Winston-Salem, N.C., and Catherine Hynes of Seattle; and three sisters, Catherine Austin and Noel Murray, both of Atlanta, and Peggy Starr of St. Simons Island.

Memorial contributions may be made to the St. Vincent de Paul Society.