“We just kept on coming…”

Hooray, we have arrived in SW Florida.  It is a bit chilly here but then compared to up North, well you get the picture. We are moved in, bought groceries, got the car washed, and went to the weekly Farmers’ Market. Time now to walk a bit, do some long-delayed reading, and soak up the ambiance of this island paradise.  OK, let’s get the “business” out of the way. Masking is totally optional down here. At the grocery store, 50% of us wore masks, at ACE, where men are men and macho is the order of the day, maskers comprise maybe 10% of the clientele. At the Farmers’ Market, it is around 15% who care about whether tomorrow ever comes. That’s it on the “masking update” from Southwest Florida. On a personal note, we’ve been informed of the death of three people from Covid who are related to close friends:  a woman in her 40s, two men: one in his 40s and another barely 60. All three declined to get vaccinated—one because it violated her rights and the other two, because they thought the vaccine “too risky.”  And now they’re dead.  Go figure.  Let’s hope that whatever your position on this national debate, if you can call it such, that 2022 is superior in every way to 2020 and 2021.

Gordy Taylor is just damn grateful to be here writing this after a six-month odyssey of a kidney stone, followed by a mysterious neck ailment, to pneumonia, to a cancer scare, and to round out a crazy time, some topical chemotherapy to treat precancerous skin issues on my face, chest, arm, and back. PEG made the trip South with us, so I will be pretty much in long sleeves and a cheap meal for Diane. After consulting with my doctors, I have made a significant compromise—I am eating some, not a lot but some.  Generally at dinner, I try and eat, yes eat, enough to not necessitate my usual meal of Jevity 1.2.  So far it seems to be working. Of course, I continue to do my swallowing exercises and will get retested upon our return to Macomb to see if progress is being made.  Not the best situation but getting used to it and moving on with our lives.  If one was to feel sorry for anyone, it should be Diane whose eating and dining protocol has changed dramatically. 

Son Ryan gave me Destiny and Power, The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham so began reading it yesterday.  Bush’s leadership and influence are explored at length. It got me to thinking about the people who influence and help show each of us “the way” to realizing our full potential as human beings.  Then it hit me. One of my professors at Western Illinois University did just that very thing.  His name is Dr. Victor Hicken who was an iconic and monumental figure in the History Department for decades. Hicken was a scholar of the highest order and a renown published expert on the Civil War.  In 1969, he was chosen by his peers as the first Distinguished Faculty Lecturer at Western which is the highest honor that can be accorded a faculty member.  In addition to his other pursuits, Hicken was author of The Purple and the Gold, a history of Western’s first 70 years. 

I took him for three classes—two on US History and another called a Senior Colloquium which one took near the end of their senior year. Dr. Hicken was a man with “presence.”  When he entered the classroom, all eyes were on him for the next 50 minutes. We knew he was going to entertain, teach, and even make us think. When he lectured on the Civil War, you were there, experiencing each battle in vivid detail. You learned of the horror of this conflict from the hand-to-hand fighting of brother versus brother to the awful conditions from prison camps like Andersonville. He was not simply a teacher but also a master story teller and if, like me, you were fortunate to get him for both US History classes, at the end, you had a working knowledge of the American Story.

The colloquium class was a wonderful capstone to one’s college career. Class size was restricted to ten students and we met weekly to discuss issues of the day—Does the United States need a third political party? Is Milton Friedman’s view of economic analysis correct? How has the assassination of John F. Kennedy affected American society? What is the most important concept you learned in college? It was a truly rewarding, thought-provoking, and tremendously interesting class and at its conclusion, I told him so.  I got to know Vic Hicken on a personal level and one day I asked him a question that had been gnawing at me for a couple of years. “Why did you give me a B and not an A in History 225?” He didn’t miss a beat. “Because that’s what YOU earned” came the quick, no nonsense reply.

Fast forward to the early part of this century and President Don Spencer and I were visiting and somehow we came up with the idea of an interview show on University Television, much like Charlie Rose did on PBS prior to his fall from grace.  I ended up doing 250 shows with presidents of Western, vice-presidents, deans, administrators, faculty members, alumni, local officials, and pretty much anyone deemed appropriate. The youngest interviewee was 19 and the oldest 101.  Who would be the first person to sit in the “interviewee” chair? Well, of course, Dr. Victor Hicken. I interviewed him four times over the next decade and he was as good with the microphone as he was in front of the class. One of the first things we talked about was WWII . I leaned into him from across the table and said, “You were in the first wave at Normandy.  Have you seen Saving Private Ryan?” He replied, “Yes, Gordon, I have and it is totally accurate. Young men were blown up in front of me.  Soldiers were crying out for their mothers. It was a scene of absolute carnage.” I pressed on. “Diane and I have been to Pointe du Hoc where the German machine guns were pointed directly down at the beach where American troops were landing. How did we ever get a foothold?”  Hicken paused for a moment and out came the thoughtful reply. “They simply couldn’t kill us fast enough. We just kept coming until the beach was fortified.”  I was speechless. There I sat with a man who had actually been there and was sitting down with me telling his story. Less than thirty years earlier, he had actually been part of The Longest Day. 

Fifty-five minutes later, I was wrapping up my first interview with this courageous, modest, self-effacing quiet man.  He was in his eighties by then and Father Time had slowed his body down a bit but not his mind.  As I was set to close, he asked if he might have the last word, and I said of course. Professor Hicken reached out, took my hand in his and said, “Gordon, you’ve grown up to be a fine young man. I hope I played a small part in that happening.”  Not a dry eye in the studio. I’m sometimes asked if I really had the best job at Western. On that day in the University Television studio, Victor Hicken answered that question.