Delaware Valley Orienteering Association

Hearing of Ed Hicks passing from Eric Weyman and Bob Burg early this New Year, I have taken some time to write a remembrance of him.

I may have met Ed Hicks at some point in my first years in the sport, but my first real memory of Ed Hicks relates to the Convention that he and Bill Shannon put on in 1980.  That may have been the best Convention I have ever attended.  I had graduated only a few years earlier from IUP and was a four year member of IUPOC, a quite active and competitive college club, and had moved to eastern PA and joined DVOA. DVOA was a small club at the time - not much larger than my college club was. In 1980, I decided to go to my first ever USOF (OUSA) Convention that year.  Since that Convention, I have told many that I felt reborn into the sport.  

Ed and Bill had organized a great set of programs, and it was hard to decide which I should attend at the time because they were all so interesting to me.  I decided to attend a series of programs presented by Jack Lee and Jim Gilchrist that completely changed my viewpoint of the sport.  Caroline and Kent Ringo had told me a few times during my first year or so how important beginners and non-competitors were to the sport, but I came from competitive heritage so I didn’t take it seriously at the time. It wasn’t until Ed and Bill’s convention that what they said really sunk in.  Listening to Ed Hicks, Bill Shannon, Jack Lee, and Jim Gilchrist speak about the sport led me to return to DVOA with specific ideas on how to grow the sport. These ideas and methods were over time adopted by DVOA and inspired the start-up of DVOA Educational Services. 

From that point forward, Ed became one of those individuals who I highly regarded for his knowledge, wisdom, ideas and unrelenting enthusiasm for the sport I had fully adopted into my way of life.  I always looked forward to seeing Ed at national and local events, for he would inform me on what was new and available to read about in the sport. I remember that there were many times when I would be on my way to registration or start and pass by his display and he would stop speaking with someone and shout something like ‘Mark, stop by when you get a chance, I want to speak to you about something’.  I can remember on multiple occasions the twinkle in his eyes and his funny smile when he had something exciting to tell me about. Ed’s enthusiasm was contagious and boosted my desire to continue to market the sport. Over the years he would always want to show me the maps he was working on and what methods were being used to teach people about the sport. His methods have been utilized by many and have indirectly become a part of the fond memories to thousands of beginners when they first learned about the sport.  He would talk to me about the groups he was meeting and how with the right amount of cooperation the sport could grow.  More recently, as I began to plan for what happens when I retire, he became a great source of information on mapping. This past autumn, when I had problems with my install of OCAD, he immediately provided me with the information to correct the issue.  Even though he was not feeling well, he was there for me and many others.

When I look back at the early years of the sport, there are many individuals who played important roles in the development of orienteering but never really received the recognition.  I believe Ed Hicks stands out on this list as someone who continued to inspire us to enjoy orienteering, the outdoors itself, and the many friendships it has brought to us all.  Ed was deserving of our sport’s highest recognition and I believe Ed should be the first ever to receive the Silva Award posthumously.