"30" for PD Writer Bill Hickey

Long-time Plain Dealer television critic Bill Hickey was 83 when he died of cancer Friday morning. Please pass this along to other old-time PD writers and editors on your social network list. The obit will be in the paper Saturday or Sunday. McGorray's Funeral Home on Center Ridge Rd. in Westlake from 2-8 on Monday. Funeral Mass Tuesday morning at 10:30 at St. Raphael Catholic Church, Dover Center Rd., Bay Village. Get there early. Huge crowd. Bill and wife Joan have nine children and 32 grandchildren. They'll all be there.

He won a National Headliner Award for his television writing in the 1970's which was the highest award ever for a Plain Dealer writer until Connie Schultz won her Pulitzer. (Editorial cartoonist Ed Kuekes won a Pulitzer in the 1940's.)

He also was the first editor of the PD Action Tab, forerunner to the Friday Magazine, where he created restaurant critic Forchette Escargot.

He joined The Plain Dealer as a copy editor in the sports department in 1962 and was there only four years before starting the magazine, but that is where he achieved lasting fame. While writing a notes and items column called "This Sporting Life," he invented the legendary Korean football star Won Sok Hung of Pusan State. It began with one sentence. The next week two sentences, when coach Nu Rok Nee was introduced. Three sentences a week later, when announcer Gib Shan Lee appeared. By the end of the season Pusan State was headed to the Sake Bowl and Bill Hickey was headed toward immortality. Years later he stretched the saga into a book which did not sell well, but that was because it was written in English. If he had written it in Korean it would have been a best seller.

"Bill was the most valuable employee The Plain Dealer ever had," said retired rewrite man and police reporter Don Bean. "He did it all. Edited, makeup, covered the TV beat. What a talent!"

It should be noted that Bean was still drinking when he formed that impression, but others said the same thing.

Bill was revered at the Headliner Bar next to The Plain Dealer because he always paid his tab, whether he could afford it or not. Sadly, his daughter Nina had to go without shoes one winter, but Bill always paid his tab. She never complained, despite almost losing her baby toe to frost bite.

Roll will be taken at the wake. Bill Ameen and Red Pigg, who owned the old Headliner, better be there.

This article reprinted from CoughlinUnplugged.com, through a partnership between Dan Coughlin and The Cleveland Leader. To read more of his writing, visit his website.