Tom Wicker 1926-2011

I was only eleven years old during the time of the Attica prison riot in 1971. As an 11 year old, I was far more interested in Bobby Darin's singing and the TV series "Alias Smith and Jones" than I was in current events. But the events in Attica, New York somehow made it into my consciousness. The four days that constituted the duration of the uprising, including the negotiations of a team that included Tom Wicker, William Kunstler and Louis Farrakhan, were never anything more than a blip on my radar at that time. But Tom Wicker was not. I found in him a writer that as a young girl I was hard-pressed not to admire. Whenever possible I would try to find his stories or columns; this often meant getting my hands on a copy of the New York Times, which meant reading it in the library.

Anyway, Mr. Wicker retired from the newspaper business in 1991. He wrote many books, though I have to admit to only having read "A Time to Die". In reading his obituary, I realize that I missed out on a lot with regards to Tom Wicker. It seems his coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy was really quite something. You can read more about him at the obituary in The New York Times, the newspaper that was his home for so many years:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/us/tom-wicker-journalist-and-author-dies-at-85.html?_r=1

Tom Wicker was a great writer and a good man. He lived a good, long life. And he will be missed.