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Community honours man with ?infectious smile?

BY KEITH LACEY [email protected] David Hickey never had a bad day. That?s remarkable considering the tremendous obstacles he overcame to lead a life that touched so many.
BY KEITH LACEY

David Hickey never had a bad day.

That?s remarkable considering the tremendous obstacles he overcame to lead a life that touched so many.

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HICKEY
With a vocabulary of only two dozen or so words, Hickey managed to communicate and make friends through his infectious smile, unmatched work ethic and willingness to help others.

Members of Hickey?s family and dozens of friends at the Blue Door Cafe (Catholic Charities Soup Kitchen) showed up for a memorial Thanksgiving dinner Sunday.

His father Neil, mother Mariette, five brothers and sisters and numerous nieces and nephews, proudly donated a new state-of-the-art dishwasher on David?s behalf to the place he considered his home away from home.

Hickey, 42, drowned in late June at a swimming hole he loved after accidentally slipping off a rock.

The dishwasher donated by the Hickey family is appropriate because David volunteered his time for more than 20 years washing dishes at the downtown soup kitchen.

?David just loved his job...Everyone here is a volunteer, but David considered coming here to be his job,? said Kaireen Crichton, the founder and spiritual leader of the Blue Door Cafe.

?When he wasn?t busy washing dishes, he was out on the floor collecting dishes and winning people over with his beautiful smile.

?He had to work hard because this is such a busy place, but hard work never bothered David. He never had a bad day and always did his work with that beautiful smile on his face.?

You couldn?t find a more loyal volunteer. Hickey missed only a handful of shifts in his 20 years at the soup kitchen, said Crichton.

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Members of David Hickey?s family gathered at the Blue Door Café on Sunday to celebrate his life and donate a dishwasher to the place he thought of as his second home.
Each day, David took a bus from Falconbridge to the downtown soup kitchen, and then made the long trek home after his shift.

?The only time David didn?t show up was when he was very sick,? she said. ?He just loved coming here...He loved everyone and everyone loved him.?

Crichton and dozens of volunteers at the soup kitchen were devastated by David?s untimely death.

?I was like a second mom to David...he called me the ?big boss?,? said Crichton ruefully. ?He was just a special person who touched the lives of so many people.?

Crichton admits she was very protective.

?No one was allowed to call him a boy because David was a young man,? she said. ?We have a lot of clients with disabilities like David had. Just because you have to overcome things in life, doesn?t mean you don?t become an adult. David was very mature in so many ways.?

David had a special place in his heart for other disabled persons, she said.

?He had this special bond with them without having to communicate that bond,? she said.

The new dishwasher will be a lasting reminder of what a wonderful person David was and how much he influenced so many lives, said Crichton.

?Many times David would be loading dishes into our old dishwasher and he?d accidentally drop some dishes,? recalled Crichton. ?He?d never get mad,
but just smile and say ?oops? and make us all laugh.?

David?s dad said the memorial dinner was something he and his family will also never forget.

?We?re just very honoured they would do something like this for David and our family,? he said.

David had an enlarged pancreas and suffered from hypoglycemia as a child, which caused brain damage. At age seven, David accidentally pulled a pot of steaming wieners off a stove, causing severe burns to much of his body, forcing him to spend months in recovery, said Neil. He was also
diabetic and had serious vision loss in his later years.

But none of these disabilities and ailments stopped him from loving people and life, he said.

?For a guy who only knew a few words, he sure spoke to a lot of people,? said the proud father.

Since David?s funeral, more than 300 cards of sympathy have been forwarded to the family and ?we?re still getting them three months later,? he said.
The generous donations from David?s friends paid for the dishwasher donated by the family to the soup kitchen, he said.

When David wasn?t volunteering at the soup kitchen, he enjoyed supporting the Sudbury Wolves, camping at Halfway Lake Provincial Park and
teasing the family cat, said his father.

David?s brother Michael is a former captain of the Sudbury Wolves.

?David just loved hockey...he followed his brother?s career very closely and he loved the Sudbury Wolves. I can count on one hand how many road games he missed on the radio over the past years,? he said.

Losing David so tragically at such a young age is impossible to describe, said his father.

?It?s been very, very tough,? he said. ?But we all know David was a special person and he made a big difference in a lot of lives and that?s made
things a lot easier.?




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