Hicks has been a foster parent to 216 children. She has their names written in her Bible, which she keeps on a table beside her bed.
"There are 69 names in my old Bible and 147 names in my new Bible," Hicks said.
"I can tell you something about each one of them," Hicks said with a twinkle in her eye.
"My husband said when he came home from work he never knew how many children we would have," Hicks said.
"I treated everyone of the foster kids just like they were mine and sometimes it was hard to give them up," Hicks said.
"It has been a blessing. I wish I hadn't gotten too old to do it," Hicks said.
Hicks said she was born and raised about three miles east of Gore 82 years ago.
Hicks said her parents moved from Arkansas to Webbers Falls in the early 1920s.
"I remember mom and dad had a new Ford Model T. Mom drove her car and dad came in a boxcar because he brought his livestock. He bought a farm at Webbers Falls on the river and the year I was born they moved into the house east of Gore," Hicks said.
"That was during the depression and it was rough back then," Hick said. "There were nine of us kids."
Hicks said her father farmed and raised all of their food.
"We had a long bench on each side of the table and a chair at each end of table," Hicks said. "We didn't have a lot of different stuff to eat but we had enough of what we had. We grew up eating a lot of potatoes."
Hicks said they never went to town very often. But she remembers going to Vian with her dad to sell cotton.
"I went to town with daddy to sell his cotton. He gave us a quarter apiece. We went around to a store on front street. I bought a baby doll for 10 cents and a yard and half of material. It was white with little pink rosebuds of it and my sister made me a new dress," Hicks said. "I was about seven years old.
"We didn't get many toys but what we got we took care of," Hicks said.
"We went to California in 1935 in a 1932 Chevrolet with all nine of us in that car," Hicks said.
"I remember going through the desert and everyone had those water bags hanging on their car," Hicks said.
"I remember daddy saying, "I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't charge for water someday," Hicks said with a laugh.
Hicks said her mom was a firm believer in being independent and taught every one of the kids to drive. "She started us out early, by the time we were 12," she said.
Hicks said she meet her husband, Harold, 26 years ago.
"I was working in Tulsa as an apartment manager and one of my foster girls, Jackie, had come to live with me," Hicks said.
"She was supposed to meet her boyfriend at a dance in Broken Arrow. She didn't want to wait by herself and asked me to go with her," Hicks said.
"I told her I would go and wait with her until he got off work," Hicks said.
"Harold's brothers wanted him to go and there I sat and there he sat," Hicks said. "He got up and asked Jackie to dance, but she was waiting on her boyfriend, so he asked me to dance and that was it."
Hicks said she still gets hugs and visits from her foster kids.
