His good deeds living on
Lawrence Hickey missed the day in his honor, held at the school that bears his name, by three days. Hickey died on March 28, 2011. The Lawrence F. Hickey Center for Child Development had scheduled the ceremony for March 31, which would have been Hickey’s 91st birthday.
“They were planning his day for March 31,” recalled his daughter, WPIX TV reporter Magee Hickey.
“All these developmentally delayed 3and 5-year-olds were painting pictures for Mr. Hickey, and preparing their songs.
“Then they had to tell them he had passed away.”
The school, one of several charities and causes to which the late Lawrence Hickey dedicated huge swatches of time and energy, made Lawrence F. Hickey Day an annual event. Last Friday, Magee, with sisters Jane Hickey Sexton and Elizabeth Hickey Lavin, and brother Frank attended this year’s ceremony at the school, which is part of the Astor Children’s Services arm of Catholic Charities.
On April 14, Magee Hickey will host another annual event in her father’s honor, a cabaret featuring nearly two dozen New York television reporters and personalities singing, dancing and generally trying to trip the light fantastic for a good cause.
Ernie Anastos, Marvin Scott, Kaity Tong, Howard Thompson, Mr. G., Sukanya Krishnan, Dr. Sapna Parikh and Linda Church are just a few of the personalities scheduled to perform at the 2 p.m. show — following a 1 p.m. reception — at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at 1 E. 91st St. in Manhattan.
Hickey, who will mark 30 years as a television reporter in the New York market in December, took up singing two years ago in tribute to her late mother, Jean Hogan Hickey, an actress and singer who died in 2007.
“My mother always loved singing and the great American songbook,” Hickey said. “I had always had a fear of singing even though I’m a newscaster and was always on TV and had acted in college and high school.”
So Hickey signed up for a cabaret singing class at the 92nd St. Y and considered it a divine sign when two of her six classmates turned out to be women who had sung in the St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church choir with her mother for 25 years.
A colleague caught the graduation performance and suggested Hickey develop an act she could use to fundraise. Hickey’s cabaret class teacher, Colette Black, is directing the April 14 show.
Lawrence Hickey, who made a living in construction and real estate, was “a great father, a great husband, a great son, a great nephew,” who didn’t even start volunteering until he was 57 years old, after all of his kids had left their upper East Side home.
At various times he served as parish council president at St. Vincent Ferrer Church and board president at the Convent of the Sacred Heart School. Lawrence Hickey also headed the Save the Armory Committee which successfully fought a planned commercial conversion of the armory at 66th St. and Lexington Ave.
In 1977, Lawrence Hickey helped nuns at the Kennedy Child Study Center, a school for developmentally delayed and special needs children associated with Catholic Charities, repair a hole in a wall. He would later serve on its board of directors. Magee Hickey will emcee a May 3 benefit for that group.
So when Astor Children’s Services was looking to expand, it asked Lawrence Hickey to find a building. He found one on Dyre Ave. in the Bronx, and when it opened in 1991 Astor in gratitude named it after him.
Tickets are $50, $150 and $500 and are available via email at dvaldez@astorservices.org, at astorservices.org, or by calling Dana Valdez at (845) 871-1171.