[3] In fall 1928, he went to Washington, D.C. to enter the Foreign Service School at Georgetown University,[6] but was hired by radio station WRC several weeks later on October 15 that year.

[8] By 1931, he had broadcast such celebrities as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Albert Einstein, Mary Pickford and Maurice Chevalier, and covered such events as the arrival of Admiral Byrd from the South Pole, the Poughkeepsie Regatta, World Series baseball games with Graham McNamee, the Lipton yacht races and the arrival of the Graf Zeppelin at Lakehurst, New Jersey on its around-the-world trip.

"[14] On Christmas Day that year, Hicks was one of a number of newsmen injured when a Nazi bomb wrecked a small hotel in Belgium where they were staying.

[3] Hicks was also an announcer on Jack Benny's Canada Dry Ginger Ale Program, his final broadcast being on October 26, 1932 as the show changed networks from NBC to CBS.

[citation needed] He was survived by his wife, Anne, and his only child, Robert Ivan Hicks, born in 1933, who still lives in New York.