The Allied Press employee was farewelled into retirement yesterday after 48 years at the company during which he helped to produce the Otago Daily Times, The Star and other community publications.
He was employed in 1971 as an office junior, aged 17, straight out of King's High School.
From the old Otago Daily Times building on lower High St he would get the mail, do the banking and run errands in the company's fleet of Minis.
He worked in advertising and publishing for a while, but in the mid-1970s took his place in the reel room where he worked for most of his career.
From then until this week, he did his part in bringing people of the South the news of the day by loading the large paper reels on to trolleys, ordering them, stripping them down and de-plating the press. Workers then could carry only a single cast metal printing plate at a time, he said. Upward mobility in the company was also more difficult back then, he noted.
"You had to wait until someone died or retired to move up to the next level."
In 1977, the Otago Daily Times moved into its current premises in Stuart St.
He believed he was only one of a handful still around from the High St days.
The work was always quite physical but the huge reels were now half the size of what they once were.
It was "good hours and good money" that kept him at the company so long.
Mr Hicks lives with his wife in Fairfield.
He was ready for retirement, which he would spend in his garden and working on an old V8 ute.
"I'm quite happy to be retiring while I still have my health," Mr Hicks said.
