The courtship between Joan Wilson and William Hicks started out with a bang, literally.
“We had a little explosion,” Hicks said with a low chuckle. “Well, maybe it wasn’t an explosion. But I did burn up her favorite corduroy skirt with acid.”
It has been an adventure ever since, he said.
“We lived a fun life and it’s been a good life.”
Joan Wilson Hicks of Sandy Springs died Wednesday from natural causes. She was 82.
A memorial service is planned for 11 a.m. on Monday at Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church. Cremation Society of Georgia is in charge of arrangements.
A Newnan native, Hicks met her future husband in chemistry class at Mercer University in the 1940s, a decade or so before they eventually married, he said. After college she went off to explore California with a few girlfriends before eventually returning to Georgia.
“She was independent and wanted to make her way,” said William Hicks.
The couple married in 1959 and raised two children, a daughter and son. They lived in Birmingham for a couple of years before moving back to Atlanta in 1961.
Joan Hicks had careers in publishing and advertising before she settled into family life, said Nancy Noel Hicks, her daughter, who lives in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla.
In the ‘50s, Joan Hicks became a writer and editor for a trucking industry trade publication, a male-dominated environment which didn’t bother her one bit, her daughter said.
“She was a hero and inspiration to many women I know,” Nancy Hicks said. “For her, it was never a matter of, ‘Can I do it?’ But it was, ‘What do I want to do?’”
One of the things Joan Hicks decided to do was write romance novels, her daughter said.
“This was when she was in her 50s,” Nancy Hicks said. “And she wrote into her 60s.”
Under the pen names Kay Wilding and Kit Wyndham, Joan Hicks wrote and published 11 books, her daughter said.
“I lived the romance and she wrote it,” William Hicks said with a laugh. “But really, we’d all share things we’d seen with her and she’d sometimes say, ‘I think I’ll write about that.’”
Nancy Hicks was full of energy and determination, her daughter said. Even in her younger days, when women were not necessarily encouraged to enter the workforce, Hicks had a different vision of her future.
“To be a small-town girl from Newnan, she sure had some big-city ideas,” she said.
In addition to her husband and daughter, Hicks is survived by her son, Edward “Ted” Paul Hicks, of Atlanta.
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