John Doane Wicks Jr.

Biography

John Doane Wicks Jr made music a profession shared with students, fellow performers, and community singers. The University of New Hampshire remembered him as a professor emeritus of music after his death in 2010. His influence extended beyond the university: the Rockingham Choral Society identifies him as its founding director, placing him at the beginning of an organization that continued bringing choral music to the region for decades.

His teaching also survives in the careers of individual musicians. Organist David Wold names John Wicks among his teachers at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, in the northeastern United States. That recollection gives substance to the family’s description of John as an accomplished organist and college teacher: his work included helping younger performers develop their own musicianship.

John was the son of John Doane “Jack” Wicks and Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Carpenter Stevens Wicks, and the brother of Sylvia Wicks Garvey. Family correspondence places his birth in Hartford, Connecticut, in March 1923, while a published family directory gives a March 1922 birth. His exact birthday remains uncertain.

He died on September 22, 2010. The university notice and the continuing choral society preserve two complementary parts of his life’s work: music taught in an academic setting and music made together in the wider community.

The family directory places his burial at Dover, New Hampshire.