Sydney Stevens and Ray Hicks had “the visit of a lifetime” at Ray’s 93rd birthday party at the Pacific County Historical Society on May 13, 2023.

It must have been at the Pacific County Historical Society’s 2008 or 2009 Annual Meeting that President Steve Rogers came up to me and said, “After the meeting, could you stick around for a few minutes? There’s someone here who would like to meet you.” I don’t quite remember the details (though Ray probably does.) I don’t remember if I was the speaker that day but I do think that Ray Hicks was there to be introduced as the subject of the next Sou’wester, Volume XlV, Number 2, the Summer 2009 issue.

I also remember that Ray didn’t say much when I was introduced to him. But he had the brightest, most interested eyes of anyone I’ve ever talked with. Actually, it was Steve who did most of the talking. Apparently, Ray had been working on the day of the Oysterville Centennial celebration back in 1954 (!) and he had spotted me — all decked out in my 1854-period costume. “Who is that?” he asked his friend Bud Goulter. “Would you introduce me?” But Bud got busy and Ray was too shy to approach me on his own.

Even all those 55 years later, Ray didn’t have much to say except an apologetic, “I’m very shy.” So, when the Sou’wester finally came out, both my husband Nyel and I read it avidly to learn more about Ray and how he had spent the intervening years making history here in the county!

His legend had its beginnings on his 14th birthday when his dad told him he was old enough to work in the woods with him. So, in the summers between school years, Ray learned to braid cable and rope, how to use dynamite and blasting powder and how to become proficient with simple machines. As his friend and caregiver Dutch Holland says, “With his phenomenal memory, he didn’t forget any of this. Furthermore, Ray had an intuitive understanding of how forces acted and reacted, which gave him the ability almost instantaneously to problem-solve dangerous conditions.”

By the time he graduated from high school, Ray was finishing his float house on North River and beginning a 45-year venture into pile driving. He is credited with driving pilings for countless docks, piers and bridges and also built three shingle mills, three sawmills and performed dozens of electrician jobs over his career. Ray also invented several devices never seen before, his proudest being the dock hoist for Dick Wilson at Bay Center Mariculture. With 2,000-pound capacity, it operated for over 30 years.

In October 2022, Pacific County honored Ray by renaming the portion of South Bend’s Quincy Street between Lorraine and Ohio Streets “Ray Hicks Street.” Ray has lived for decades on that street in a house built by Samuel Soule in 1853. It was the first house built on what was then called, “Snoose Hill” and later, “Eklund Park.” In all the years he has lived there, Ray has opted to cook and heat with old-fashioned wood stoves, steering away from public utility energy and choosing to live like the pioneers who built the county.

At the street-renaming ceremony, his sister Doris Hicks Busse said, “when he had his float house up North River, Ray would throw a cookout for the Fourth of July for the river people and those up for a boat ride of fishing. Anyone who went by his place was invited with a wave of his hand.

“He had his lawn mowed, the flower garden weeded and in bloom, the fire pit ready, and his homemade picnic table dressed with flowers and food… When family and friends visited during the summer, he would take them to Sand Island to clam dig, show them baby seagulls hatching in the sand, a tour where seals would be sunbathing and sometimes go to his North River float house and cook clams in a skillet over his fire pit,” she added.

Since our first meeting at that Pacific County Historical Society meeting, Ray and I have crossed paths three more times — at Bud Goulter’s memorial service at the Oysterville Schoolhouse, at the 2023 Annual PCHS meeting in Tokeland, and at his 93rd birthday party at the PCHS Museum in South Bend. Each time — except the last — I think I did all the talking (or at least 99% of it.) But Ray’s eyes shone and he seemed to listen to every word I said. Several times he told me, again, that he was “shy” which I probably acknowledged and blew off at the same time.

But at his 93rd birthday party in May, he talked up a storm. We talked about our memories, and about our failing eyesight, of the books we are reading (and the trouble with small print), and of some of Ray’s jobs over on the west side of the bay. He talked to me about cables and other mysterious (to me) job-related “stuff” and, also, about a couple of bad accidents he’d had years ago — 400 stitches! OMG!

But the man is apparently indestructible. Thank goodness or he never would have made it to legend status and I’d have missed the photo op of my lifetime. Little did I know back in 1954 that a man on his way to legendary status had his eye on me! Wow!