His family often urged Andrew Wick to take time for himself.
“We’d say, ‘Dad, why don’t you go do something you want to do, like go to the lake and go fishing?’” said his son, Gregg Wick, 48, of Hillsboro. “But he’d always say, ‘No, there’s a softball game this weekend.’ He never missed one of his granddaughters’ games.
“He worked all the time to provide for his family. He did everything for us because we were what mattered most to him.”
Mr. Wick died Dec. 14 at age 75 after suffering a massive stroke while “piddling around” in the barn at his home. He had worked in the appliance industry for many years, retiring in 2003.
He graduated from Affton High School in 1960 near the top of his class, and excelled in sports, especially baseball.
“He started in the Heine Meine league and played throughout his early adulthood,” Gregg said.
A summons from Uncle Sam derailed his plans for major-league stardom, however.
“Well, you know how stories go,” Gregg said with a laugh. “But he always said that he was being looked at by the major-league draft when he went into the Army. How close he was to actually being picked up, I don’t know; but he was serious about it.
“He always said he got drafted by the wrong organization.”
He served as an MP with the Army in Korea in the staging area for those headed to Vietnam.
Mr. Wick had worked for the Frisco railroad during high school and college.
“Before computers, they kept a big giant board with little markers that they’d move around to show where all the trains were,” Gregg said. “My dad worked as a caller, yelling out which boxcars went to which trains and when they were scheduled to go out.”
Instead of going back to the railroad after his stint in the military, Mr. Wick went to work in the appliance industry, where he found his niche. He quickly moved up the ranks in the sales staff at Roth Distributing, a major Midwest distributor for Amana, Zenith, Kitchen Aid, Jenn-Air and other popular brands.
“They were the top dog,” Gregg said. “Dad eventually rose to president. They have a big warehouse in Earth City; he oversaw the building of that.
“Really, he was just a typical hardworking, dedicated company guy.”
Mr. Wick was married in 1965, and Gregg was born in 1970. His sister would follow almost five years later. The family moved to Pacific in 1972, where they enjoyed ‘country living’ on several acres of wooded property.
The Wicks went to “a ton” of professional baseball and hockey games, and Mr. Wick was always involved with his son’s sports.
The family also enjoyed traveling.
“He loved to fish, hike and hunt, so a lot of our family vacations were to places like Gatlinburg or Great Smoky Mountain National Park,” Gregg said. “We went to Alaska to go salmon fishing and exploring. Those were the most memorable, the ones where we spent time out in nature.”
Mr. Wick also went on hunting and fishing trips with friends in Mexico and Canada, where he bagged some trophy animals. But Gregg says his dad was too much of a softie to do much killing for sport.
“About 99 percent of his fishing was catch-and-release,” Gregg said. “And with hunting, half the fun to him was tracking, finding, getting close to the animals. He just couldn’t stand killing them, so it was a real catch-22 for him. I think mostly he went just to enjoy being outside.”
His love of animals, especially horses, led Mr. Wick to be involved with the Missouri Emergency Response Service (MERS) large animal rescue team.
“In later years, his role was mostly to supervise,” Gregg said. “But back in the day, he’d be down there in the mud along with everyone else. He worked on everything from major incidents, like a trailer overturned with 30 animals inside, down to single-animal rescues.”
In the late 1980s, the advent of big-box discount stores came around the same time US-based manufacturers were moving out of the country.
Roth went out of business, and Mr. Wick went to work for Dacor, commuting between St. Louis and its headquarters on the west coast.
“Every Monday, he’d fly to LA; every Thursday night or Friday, he’d fly back,” Gregg said. “He did that for more than 10 years. It was a crazy schedule for him to keep.”
After he retired from Dacor, Mr. Wick stayed on as a consultant for some years. He devoted the majority of his time, though, to tending the horses and other animals on his farm and attending as many of his four grandchildren’s school and sports events as he could fit in.
“Probably every day of the week, he was at a game, sometimes more than one in a day,” Gregg said. “Both my daughters were on travel softball teams, and he’d go around to neighboring states, even down to Florida for nationals.”
He was a loyal fan but not a shy one.
“He would say, ‘That player there, she’s horrible!’” Gregg said with a laugh. “We’d all be saying, ‘Dad! Her mother is sitting right over there!’ He was always super-supportive; he just didn’t have any filter at all.”
Gregg said his father will be remembered as someone who took great pride in his family.
“He had a very dry sense of humor, and he liked to tell these long-winded stories. He was brutally honest but constantly encouraging. We’ll miss that.”
“Life Story,” posted Saturdays on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.