It was almost a year ago that longtime Westside News contributors Doug and Dianne Hickerson bid farewell to their Brockport home and moved to Virgina to downsize and be closer to family. Despite the distance, Doug continued to contribute articles from time to time, the most recent in September. Doug died on October 21 following a brief illness.
“Westside News greatly benefited from Doug Hickerson’s involvement with the papers’ attempts to keep the communities it serves abreast of important activities affecting those communities,” said Westside News Publisher Keith Ryan.
Over 28 years, Doug’s stories, often accompanied by Dianne’s photography, featured Brockport area service organizations, institutions, interesting people, and remarkable places including museums, historic sites, and landmarks that he encountered. In his farewell article last year, Doug wrote, “We have had many comments that our writing has made readers more aware of who we are as human community. That is one of our motives in writing “human interest” stories, and it is gratifying to see they are received that way.”
Ryan added, “Doug’s decades of writing for Westside News enabled us all to become more familiar with his goodness and intelligence. He saw and understood the challenges our industry was facing and offered to help where he could. Westside News and the communities he wrote about lost a tremendous asset with the passing of Doug Hickerson. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him and our thoughts are with his wife, Dianne, and his family.”
Remembering Doug
Doug Hickerson wrote with his heart.
He loved the Brockport community. He appreciated any efforts, great or small, that sought to preserve, to enrich, to show human kindness to others. Just as his wife, Dianne, succeeded in capturing the surroundings through her paintings, Doug used a storehouse of skills to represent achievements, successes, and struggles in words.
Doug and I started to work together with assigned articles soon after he retired from his career in education. He wanted to “do” something, he told me at a breakfast meeting. I suggested he try putting together a feature based on whatever contact I could recommend after doing some research and giving some thought as to what the newspapers’ content needs might be in the near future. That way, he’d experience the basics of interviewing, I said, and determine if he would like doing it. He was at first hesitant about approaching someone he really didn’t know to gather information, but after some thought, he decided to give it a try and launched what would become a career writing “near us” stories.
He soon admitted he liked all the “people greeting” aspects, and decided early on that his writing focus and interests were in feature writing and not the “hard news” of government, politics, budgets, police activity, or sports. Tape recorder in hand, pen and notebook at the ready, he’d commit hours of composition time supported by interview time to portray the person, place, or thing in his sights. Dianne helped by becoming his number one photographer.
Visit the Seymour Library in Brockport to see and read the significant contributions he made to accurately relate community life. He succeeded in doing what a good writer should do: inform, inspire. Without a doubt, Doug cared that he represented his subject, himself, and the newspaper accurately and well.
He was a kind, thoughtful, and caring individual. I appreciate having been able to work with him.
Evelyn Dow, Editor Emerita
Westside News Inc.
