MAY 16, 1951:
My sister Sue is born. My dad, Hugh Hickey, was also born on this date, in 1925.
THE DAY SUE WAS BORN, Dad was 5,870 miles away from his family, serving in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. In December 1950 my dad, then a surgical resident at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, received his orders for active military service. Dad left his young wife, also named Sue, and his baby son—me—and went to Korea to serve in the MASH unit that was to become a model for a book and, later, a movie and a TV series.
Dad’s fellow Army surgeon, H. Richard Hornberger, wrote MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, based on his Korean experience. The book, published under the name Richard…