Beginnings

As to my own, more immediate beginnings, I was born on November 26th, 1955 in Salt Lake City, Utah to Harold R Hickman and Joan Parkinson Hickman. My father was attending the University of Utah at the time.

I do not recall my first home. The first place I remember was an apartment in what the local inhabitants called 'Hodsonville' (named for the landlord who owned the complex of four-plex apartments) on east Third South in Salt Lake City. The apartments were west of the University, just off the hill. We lived in the upper left hand apartment of the first building facing south from the corner. I use to tumble down a mammoth slope in front of that apartment and enjoyed sliding down it when it snowed in the winter. Imagine my disappointment when I returned there years later and discovered that enormous hillside of my memory was actually only about two and a half feet tall.

By this time I was not alone in the household. My younger brother Gerald Todd Hickman was already by my side then. Pictures show us in the winter looking like two overdressed teddy bears. It was in these apartments that I was first introduced to the Bookmobile (which came to the opposite corner every week or so) and where I first encountered history. I can still recall my father telling me to watch the television one day because something important would be on. Young as I was, I still recall watching both Allan Shepherd and John Glenn launch into space -- it may be the earliest clear memory that I have. Rather appropriate considering where life would eventually lead me. I also recall watching the 1960 presidential election in that apartment -- an event since my father managed to borrow two additional televisions from friends and had a party while everyone watched John Kennedy take the election. I don't recall the election per se mind you -- just the novel idea of having more than one television on at the same time!

Soon, however, my father graduated and it was time to start moving. Moving, it seemed to me, was to become a way of life for us. I don't think that we stayed in any one place more than four years from the time I was born until I left the nest in 1975.

It was during this time that I had my first shot at television. I was on the Romper Room preschool show on KSL Channel 5 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Click the picture to see the entire class!) Alas, stardom was fleeting (I was on for the usual one week contract) but I can still remember my mother taking me to the studio and waiting there while I sat under the hot, bright lights on the set and did my best to remain alert and interesting.

Our first move was into the basement of my Aunt Roma while my father started work managing an instructional television station in Ogden, Utah. Roma lived in Salt Lake at the time. It was there, I think, that my parents began to worry about me. I would sit in Roma's basement for hours on end with blocks and a few toys and make up elaborate stories and tales about them. I seemed to prefer this activity to playing with other kids my age. They were sure something was wrong with me.

Soon afterward we moved to a duplex in Bountiful, Utah -- closer for my father to commute to work. It was up on the hillside and we had good friends who lived in the house across the street.

The next move brought us into Ogden and another duplex apartment. This one faced north and was across the street from a golf course on what was then the south end of town. It must have been about 1962, for I can still remember talk in my home about the Cuban Missile Crisis, bomb shelters and the like. The world, it would seem, was already beginning to intrude on my life as I prepared to enter school for the first time.