by Bea Peterson
On Friday afternoon, March 1, the temperature hovered in the low 30 degree range. It was easy for the people lined up in front of the Trustco Bank to note the time and the changing temperature with the Bank’s outdoor clock and thermometer so close. They patiently waited an hour or more to enter the Mahar Funeral Home to pay their respects to the family of John “Ersel” Hickey. In four hours a thousand people said goodbye to a loved and respected citizen.
[private]One of several poems interspersed with the array of flowers and the many photographs depicting the history of his life was one with the opening lines, “You can shed tears that I am gone, Or you can smile because I lived.” His family chose to smile because he lived. Honoring his love of the Cleveland Browns, Ersel wore a Browns jacket and his sons Jeffrey and Michael wore orange blazers and his daughter Katy wore an orange dress for the wake.
On Saturday the Immaculate Conception Church was filled with people who mourned his passing. The procession to the cemetery was led by Ersel’s beloved 2001 canary yellow Corvette and the last school bus he drove, which also carried the numbers of the buses he had retired.
John Hickey, 70, graduated from St. Mary’s Academy where he later coached basketball. He also coached at Hoosac School. He worked at St. Gobain and drove a school bus for the Hoosick Falls Central School for 30 years. His years of coaching and driving the bus put him in a position to influence countless youth for two generations.
He served on the Hoosick Area Youth Center Board and the Hoosick Federal Credit Union Board, and he was serving on the Hoosick Falls Village Board when illness struck. Hickey served on the Village Board for a time with his youngest son Michael. “It was good to hear him reflect on times past,” said Michael. Their views sometimes differed while they served on the Board. Some of it was a generational thing. “It was really strange looking at his views as the ups and downs occurred,” added Michael. Village Clerk Ann Bornt said she and the other women who work in the Village Office will really miss him. “He would come in and chat,” she said. “We’ll miss that.” He was known for his humble ways and his great sense of humor.
John was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2010. He underwent surgery on October 28. While he was recovering a day later, his little grandson was born two floors above him, in the same hospital. According to Michael, John was in remission for about a year. It was during that time that the family helped Ersel fulfill part of a retirement goal, which was to take his RV across country. “It was the right time,” said Michael. “Just before Alex [the oldest grandchild] went off to college. So the 14 of them, John, Sue, the three kids and their spouses and the six grandchildren traveled as far as South Dakota and the Badlands. It was the trip of a lifetime for all of them – a never to be forgotten time.
Michael said his father never drank or smoked, yet the cancer returned. It had spread to his lungs and further. Ersel’s mother had the same type of kidney cancer, and she lived 20 years after her surgery. That was not the case for her son.
John Hickey picked up the nickname “Ersel” from rock-a-billy singer Ersel Hickey. His youngest grandson is named Oliver Ersel Hickey.
Ersel is survived by his wife Sue, his daughter Katy and husband Michael Lilac, Jr., his sons, Jeffrey Hickey and wife Rhonda and Michael Hickey and wife Angela, his brother Richard Hickey and wife Nancy of Matthews, NC, and his grandchildren Alex and Hannah Lilac and Remington, Lillian, Tatum and Oliver Hickey.
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