Tag space race

Homer Hickam: What Happened to the Rocket Boy?

Reg Spittle 2 Comments

Homer Hickam and five high school buddies created the Big Creek Missile Agency in the late 1950s as the world’s space race was heating up. They designed, built, and launched increasingly sophisticated and high-flying missiles, capturing the hearts of the residents of their hometown, Coalwood, West Virginia. They gained a wider spotlight in 1960 when they won two medals in the National Science Fair.

But that was just the beginning for Homer Hickam.

He brilliantly described his coming-of-age adventures in his book, Rocket Boys, which became October Sky, an endearing motion picture. Jake Gyllenhaal, then 17, played Homer.

I loved the book and the film, but they left me wondering: Did Homer Hickam realize his dream to work for NASA?

My son Chris, who lives in Charleston, West Virginia, with his wife Gail, are big Homer Hickam and October Sky fans. Just a few weeks ago, Chris reminded me Hickam had written more memoirs that answered my question and many more.

I just finished reading all three followup books and the story about how he pursued his dream is as captivating as his high-school antics with rockets. His path includes Virginia Tech University, work in his father’s coal mine, and the Vietnam War. He lives through (barely) experiences as a scuba diver that put him on NASA’s radar. And there is so much more.

The three books that follow Rocket Boys, in order, are The Coalwood Way, Sky of Stone, and Don’t Blow Yourself Up.

But Homer Hickam, now 80, is not finished. He acquired the film rights to his story and has begun work on December Sky, a motion picture he says will not be a sequel, nor a prequel. He calls it an “equal.”

(Click here to see my review of Rocket Boys.)

Rocket Boys: A Great American Comeback

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Sputnik’s launch in 1957 thrust the Soviet Union into first place in the space race, causing fear about where its domination would lead.

But for some Americans, like Homer “Sonny” Hickam, the launch was just what they needed to transform imagination, ingenuity and hard work into a great American success story. From 1957 through 1960, Sonny and his West Virginia high school classmates, as the Big Creek Missile Agency, fired off 35 rockets, some wildly successful, some wildly disastrous.

Nearly four decades later, Hickam published Rocket Boys, a memoir that has flown off the shelves since, leading to the acclaimed film October Sky.

The boys dreamed that they would go to the moon, that their rockets would reach space, that they would escape a life working in the coal mine in Coalwood, West Virginia. But, in their wildest dreams, they could not have foreseen where their experiments would take them, their families, their community, their nation. As badly as Homer and his fellow scientists wanted out of Coalwood, their hometown came through for them when everything they had worked for was on the line.

Rocket Boys is an inspiring story for those who value education, community, family, and the dreams of kids growing up in West Virginia–or anywhere.