Former Lawrence High track star remembered as 'team-first guy'

Colleagues and coaches, past and present, took time out Wednesday to remember a former Lawrence High track star who died in a weekend crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that also killed his two children.

Donnell Hickson, 43, of Baldwin, a 1999 graduate of Lawrence High School, along with his son, Decir, 18, and his daughter, 11, were in a 2018 Honda Accord heading east about 4:25 a.m. Saturday on the turnpike in Penn Township, Lancaster County, when the vehicle collided with a 2016 Freightliner truck also going east, according to the Pennsylvania State Police.

The collision's force caused both vehicles to leave the roadway, police said. All three family members were pronounced dead at the scene.

The Lancaster County Coroner's Office withheld the name of Hickson's daughter because she was a minor. 

Hickson ran winter and spring track and also played football for four years at Lawrence, said Bud McQuillan, who coached him at Lawrence. Hickson headed off to York College in Queens, where he was an All-American and competed in the 2005 NCAA Championships in the triple jump.

"He was willing to do anything," McQuillan said. "He was always a team-first guy. In this day and age, you have people that are, 'It's all about me.' He was the opposite. He was about team."

Hickson had the physical gifts to compete in any track event, McQuillan said, and he never missed a practice in four years. In his senior year, Hickson competed in national championships in North Carolina and was an all-state triple jumper.

Pat Pizzarelli, the Lawrence athletic director when Hickson ran track, recalled the young athlete's penchant for hard work and keeping an eye on national high school competitions.

"He was just a really nice kid," said Pizzarelli, currently the executive director of Section VIII, the governing body of Nassau County scholastic sports, and the athletic director at Lawrence High from 1992 to 2017.

"It’s a real tragedy," Pizzarelli said.

Hickson made it to "Nationals his senior year and our four-by-four relay team was national champions," the former athletic director said. 

"It’s big-time to go to the national championships as a high school athlete."

After graduating, McQuillan said, Hickson never forgot his roots. He returned several times over the years to help with the school's track team.

"He just wanted to help everyone," he said. "That was his whole personality."

Hickson worked at Costco in Oceanside. Robert Bock, who previously worked with Hickson at a Costco in Westbury, said whenever anyone felt down or out of sorts, they knew whom to call.

"He would just try to cheer you up," Bock said of Hickson.

According to an online fundraiser, Decir Hickson was preparing for college and his sister saw herself as a burgeoning cartoonist.

Police did not immediately say whether the driver of the truck was injured. The investigation is ongoing.

Upon learning of the fatal crash, Bock said, he was devastated.

"I can't think of anybody who would say anything not nice about him," Bock said. "It just seemed not fair to somebody who seemed so kind and so positive."

With Jolie Katzen