Article on AAU boxer from akron HICKMAN COULDN'T BE SAVED FROM RUBBLE OF LIFE Akron Beacon Journal (OH) - Tuesday, October 24, 1989 Author: Steve Love If they could dig and cut and claw through two layers of collapsed concrete-and-steel freeway to get to earthquake survivor Buck Helm of Weaverville, Calif., why couldn't someone reach Todd Hickman ? Helm survived the tomb that is the Cypress Structure of the Nimitz Freeway in West Oakland. Hickman couldn't even survive himself. With death little more than a mile away on the Cypress Structure, with the Earthquake of `89's destruction all around, it is the faraway destruction of a life that haunts me. I can't get it out of my mind. When I came here 12 days ago for what has become the interrupted Bay Bridge Series between the Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants, Hickman lay in an Akron hospital, gravely wounded, apparently the ultimate consequence of a drug deal gone sour. Now, he is dead and buried, and it is difficult to think about the Earthquake of `89 or the World Series or anything else. I'm thousands of miles away, and all I can think about is Todd Hickman . Though I went to their Cypress tomb and talked with those who continue to search for their bodies and to hope for the miracles of life such as Helm, who was found Saturday, four days after the 6.9 quake, I didn't know the people who died there in the Earthquake of `89. I knew Hickman , though. I knew him in good times and bad. He had as much promise as any kid fighter I had ever seen. I knew him when he was a winner and after he had become a loser. He had those fast, smart hands and that faster, smarter mouth. The last time I heard from Hickman , he was in prison. Again. I read and then threw away his letter unanswered. I was through with Hickman . I couldn't reach him, not even in the small, tangential way that writers sometimes touch the lives of those about whom they write. I had tried. When, a few years earlier, Hickman was first sent to the Ohio Reformatory at Mansfield, I visited him there. We talked about what his life was like in prison, about what he wanted his life to be like on the outside. Hickman said he coveted a second chance, that he had changed. No more trouble. No more hassles. He swore it. His story had drama and pathos. He was the fallen hero. Here was a kid who had been on the verge of becoming an Olympic boxer, a good-looking kid who could have become another Sugar Ray Leonard. He had the physical skills and the personal magnetism. But he lost an important pre-Olympic fight and then he lost himself to drugs and guns and a life that the parents, who loved him so much could not help him whip, try as they might. Hickman said he hated prison. But he laughed and smiled and talked macho about how much the other cons respected him and treated him like a little king. When he was released on shock probation, he said that Mansfield had seen the last of him. He had a little girl who was important to him. He had a life. He was back at Mansfield in months, in trouble again, his probation revoked. When Hickman was ready to be released a second time, he wrote to me. This time, I didn't go to Mansfield. It wasn't just because Hickman had lied to me so often and thus to the public that once admired him. He had lied to his friends. To his parents. And, most of all, to himself. Mansfield hadn't changed Todd Hickman , which is one of the reasons I decried the decision that sent Browns running back Kevin Mack there for his admitted drug use. There are no answers in Mansfield. Sometimes, there are no answers at all. Todd Hickman always had turned to his father, Bill, and to his mother, Roberta, for them. Even after he had been shot in the head, Hickman said: `Tell my daddy.' But his daddy couldn't save him. Nobody, it seemed, could save Todd Hickman , and he couldn't save himself. So in Akron, you've buried Todd Hickman . And here, they've begun to bury those who died in the earthquake. At least here they know they never stopped trying to reach the victims. Some of us can't say that when it comes to Todd Hickman , a victim of his own frailties. dl
