‘Uncle Darrell’ logs 12 years of truck tours at school for blind in Arkansas
TRUCK TOUR: Darrell Hicks, center in white shirt and sunglasses, chats with Arkansas School for the Blind students as they prepare to explore one of the big rigs on the school parking lot. At left, wearing a dark-colored baseball cap, is Hicks’ son, Kris, one of several volunteers who participated in the annual event May 1.
By JERRY BREEDEN
The Trucker Staff
5/30/2008
LITTLE ROCK — Trucker Buddy Darrell Hicks, aka Uncle Darrell, has been helping students at the Arkansas School for the Blind “see” into the world of trucking for the past dozen years.
“I guess we’ve probably averaged 90 kids a year since we started coming here,” Hicks said during his annual visit to the school in Little Rock on May 1.
That makes for a total of 1,080 youngsters from preschool through the 12th grade.
During the latest visit, Hicks was assisted by son Kris and close friend and ABF Freight driver Dan Hiser, who is also a Trucker Buddy and a past member of America’s Road Team.
They, along with several volunteers from among members of the school faculty and some of the students’ parents, escorted the usual throng during their up-close-and-personal tour of a complete 18-wheeler and a separate tractor, both of which had been set up well ahead of time on the school parking lot.
The trailer was provided by C.C. Jones Trucking Inc. of North Little Rock, Ark., while the Kenworth W900 and the Kenworth T 660 were made available by MHC Kenworth of Little Rock.
Hicks has been a Trucker Buddy since 1994. He now serves as an adviser to the organization and is a Trucker Buddy ambassador. He said he started the now-traditional visit to the school in honor of “an old friend of mine who was blind. He and I would be out riding around and he would always ask a lot of questions about the big trucks. He found them fascinating and wanted to learn all he could about them.”
His friend died in 1996.
“He had a general idea, at least in his mind’s eye, of what a long trailer looked like, but he always wondered what a double trailer was like. I always regretted not having made one available for him to take a tour.
“After his death, I began to wonder if others with severely impaired vision might want to ‘see’ a truck, so I discussed it with Roy Nash, who was principal of the school at the time, and he liked the idea. I suppose that the rest is, like someone said, history.”
Not surprisingly, the students have more fun pulling the chain on the big air horns than anything else.
Fresh bananas, packaged apple slices and bottled water, courtesy of Ben E. Keith Co., also of North Little Rock, were distributed among those who attended.
“Whatever is left over,” said Hicks, “will be donated to the school.”
Hicks “retired” from the trucking industry after 44 years. He started as a driver in 1963. He spent the last 27 years on the job with the Penray Companies of Elk Grove Village, Ill.
Since “retiring,” he has devoted countless hours to various charitable organizations in Central Arkansas and occasionally works as a trucking industry consultant.