-------------

A thousand little victories

Jim Hickey is trying ... again ... to walk across America to raise awareness of cancer and other diseases

MONTOUR FALLS, May 25 -- He admits what he's been doing these past few years is, on the face of it, a little crazy.

"Everybody tells me that," says Jim Hickey, a New Jerseyite sitting Tuesday afternoon in the Montour Moose Lodge.

His family and friends wonder why he does it -- why he turned his back on a normal life and on his possessions to walk ... and walk ... and walk.

The Moose Lodge was a stopover Tuesday for Hickey, a 48-year-old former Marine, former bartender, former restaurant manager, former guy with a girlfriend.

The girlfriend didn't wait around when he first tried this walking thing. She was, to his dismay, married to someone else when he returned home too many months after starting his long first trek.

What Hickey was doing then, and is doing now, is trying to walk across America, from coast to coast, all the way to Los Angeles. It is not to raise funds for anything, at least not directly.

"It's to raise awareness," he said -- awareness of the need to help in the effort to cure cancer, and in the fight against Cystic Fibrosis, and in the struggle against any of a number of diseases he encounters in the people he meets along the way, along the trek. He doesn't take pledges or accept donations, he says -- but has links on a website (cancerwalkusa.com) to such organizations as The City of Hope cancer research center near Los Angeles, the CureSearch National Childhood Cancer Foundation, and the Arthritis Foundation.

"If what I do can inspire other people to donate to whatever is close to their hearts, that is enough," he said.

His first journey -- prompted in part by the loss of his father to cancer -- was from 1998-2001, and he came up short of his L.A. destination. He left from Middletown, New York, just as he did on his current fifth journey, and made it to Clovis, New Mexico.

Then from 2001-2003 he walked from Washington, D.C. to Denver, and the third time (in 2003-04) he trekked from Virginia Beach, Va. to Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Then he made it only as far as Tallahassee, Florida last year after leaving the year before from Charlotte, North Carolina.

"Things happen," Hickey said when asked why he didn't finish any of the efforts. Deaths of friends or family members, illness ... injury. That last afflicted him last time -- specifically nerve damage in his right foot.

He took six months to rest that foot between the aborted fourth journey and this fifth one -- which is different in that he is farther north. He intended to travel through Pennsylvania, bypassing New York, but "the hotels and motels were full in Pennsylvania" all along Route 6 thanks to the influx of people involved in Marcellus Shale drilling.

So he veered north, toward our region, the Southern Tier -- a place he had never visited. You might have read about him in a Valley paper, or in the Star-Gazette, or seen him featured on WENY-TV. Hickey has a knack for attracting media attention. He has, he says, appeared in 171 newspapers and been featured on 107 TV stations.

His message is always the same: "I want to raise awareness. This isn't about me. But I can bring attention to the need for awareness." He has, on occasion, directed attention to a specific individual in need.

He's done that while here -- his visit, which started Monday, ends Thursday -- by talking up the plight of Emily Reynolds, 19, a South Seneca High School graduate attending Alfred State University who has been stricken with leukemia. There is a benefit for Emily on June 5th at the Interlaken Sportsmen's Club, "and I've dedicated my walk to Rochester to her."

Accordingly, when he leaves here -- he's been staying at Seneca Lodge -- he'll walk to Trumansburg and go up Route 96 from there to Interlaken and beyond.

His message along the way will be about Emily, and he will urge people -- if they have it in their hearts and their pocketbooks -- to help in the Interlaken fund-raising.

"I never ask for money for myself," he said, although he does find help along the way -- sometimes from property owners who invite him to stay at their homes, and other times from such organizations as the Moose ("I renewed my membership when I got here") and the Fraternal Order of Eagles and the American Legion. His Marine past stands him in good stead with many people.

On occasion, he said, he just passes on through a community, and sometimes he stops. His stays can vary from days to months. His longest stop was 2 1/2 months in Brunswick, Georgia -- when he developed shin splints and waited for them to heal.

But not everyone looks kindly on Hickey or what he does. Sometimes, he says, people he encounters have no interest in him or his story, and certainly have no intention of parting with their dollars. Some are openly hostile. That negativity is discouraging, he says, as were the shin splints, and the walking pneumonia on one trip, and last trip's nerve damage.

He gains solace, he says, from writing about it. He keeps a journal, and intends to write a book. He thinks he might key the title to the number of steps he will have taken when he finally completes his mission, and reaches Los Angeles. It will be a longer route this time, since he plans now to keep to the north all the way to Portland, and then go down the west coast.

That course, if accomplished, will bring his total distance traveled afoot to 10,000 miles. With the 232 miles he's walked this time, his current total for the five treks is 6,474. The number of steps, he said, will -- at 10,000 miles -- surpass 12 million.

His writing includes Facebook entries, directed to a fan base with whom he can communicate at a moment's notice. "When I'm depressed," he said, "I write about it, and invariably several people write me and tell me to hang in there." He said he has 2,200 people who visit his Facebook page.

It is all, when you come right down to it, an obsession of sorts -- a bit crazy if judged by the norm.

"Oh, yes," he says, smiling. "I don't really know why I do what I do. And my friends ask why I don't stop. In truth, I don't recommend" the lifestyle.

"But I'm not going to give up until I reach L.A.," he added. "Anything worth accomplishing is done by people who are a little nuts."

The doing requires a certain zeal, for sure -- but also a belief that the good accomplished along the way outweighs the negatives, the setbacks, the obstacles.

It is a quest composed of belief, of faith ... and it is a quest that will require a thousand little victories in order to be achieved.

"That's exactly right," said Hickey. "A thousand little victories. Every time I come to a large hill to climb, I set my sights on the top. And when I reach it, that's a little victory."

And every time he meets a new friend along the way -- or helps the fund-raising for a fellow human in need -- that's a little victory.

Jim Hickey might never accomplish what he's trying -- but in the trying, it would seem, his little victories will have added up to a very large one, L.A. or no L.A. They will have added up to a lot of good.

"You know," he said, "I've talked in a lot of schools, mostly parochial and private. And I always tell them: 'Follow your dreams. Don't ever quit. Everybody has the ability to affect other lives.'"

It is, it seems, a philosophy he not only believes, but to which he tenaciously adheres -- spreading his seeds of encouragement along the way.

"You're sort of a modern-day Johnny Appleseed," he was told there at the Moose Lodge.

Jim Hickey just laughed. He liked that.

Photos in text:

Top and bottom: Jim Hickey during his visit to the Montour Moose Lodge.

Second: A newspaper from Sayre, Pa., featured Hickey as he passed through.

Third: Hickey's T-shirt. He sells these along the way, helping to finance his venture. They are shipped to him from a New Jersey firm at his request if he is staying in a locale for more than a couple of days.