Homer Hadley Hickam Jr. (born February 19, 1943) is an American author, Vietnam War veteran, and a former NASA engineer who trained the first Japanese astronauts. His 1998 memoir Rocket Boys (also published as October Sky) was a New York Times Best Seller and was the basis for the 1999 film October Sky. Hickam's body of written work also includes several additional best-selling memoirs and novels, including the "Josh Thurlow" historical fiction novels, his 2015 best-selling Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, his Wife, and her Alligator and in 2021 the sequel to Rocket Boys titled Don't Blow Yourself Up: The Further Adventures and Travails of the Rocket Boy of October Sky. His books have been translated into many languages.
Early life and education Homer Hadley Hickam Jr. is the second son of Homer Sr. and Elsie Gardener Hickam (née Lavender). He was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia, and graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960. He and friends Roy Lee Cooke (born December 25, 1941), Sherman Siers (June 15, 1942 – September 11, 1976), Jimmy O'Dell Carroll (born June 30, 1942), Willie "Billy" Rose (born February 17, 1942), and Quentin Wilson (November 21, 1942 – August 30, 2019) became amateur rocket builders and called themselves The Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA). After many generations of designs, they qualified for the 1960 National Science Fair and won a gold and silver medal in the area of propulsion.
Virginia Tech and Skipper Hickam attended Virginia Tech in 1960 and joined the school's Corps of Cadets. In his junior year, he and a few classmates designed a cannon for football games and school functions. They named the cannon "Skipper" in honor of President John F. Kennedy. Skipper was cast out of brass collected from the cadets (and some from Coalwood, collected and donated by Homer's father) and has become an icon for Virginia Tech. Hickam graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering.
Career
Military service (1964–1970) Hickam served six years in the U.S. Army and was honorably discharged at the rank of captain in 1970. He served in the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968 as a first lieutenant and combat engineer with C Company, 704th Maintenance Battalion, 4th Infantry Division. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation Medal, and Army Meritorious Unit Commendation ribbon.
USAAMC and NASA (1971–1998) Following his separation from the service, Hickam worked as an engineer for the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command from 1971 to 1978, assigned to Huntsville. Between 1978 and 1981, he was an engineer for the 7th Army Training Command in Germany.
Hickam began employment with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Marshall Space Flight Center in 1981 as an aerospace engineer. His specialties included training astronauts in regard to science payloads and extra-vehicular activities (EVA). Additionally, Hickam assisted at the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator as a diver where astronaut crews trained for numerous Spacelab and Space Shuttle missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope deployment, the first two Hubble repair missions, Spacelab-J (with the first Japanese astronauts), and the Solar Max repair mission. Prior to his retirement from NASA in 1998, Hickam was the payload training manager for the International Space Station program.
Literary career (1969–present) Hickam began writing in 1969 after returning from serving in the Vietnam War. His first writings were magazine stories about scuba diving and his time as a scuba instructor. Then, having dived in many of the wrecks involved, he wrote about the battle against the U-boats along the American east coast during World War II. This resulted in his first book, Torpedo Junction, a military history published in 1989 by the Naval Institute Press. His second book, the memoir Rocket Boys, started as an article "The Big Creek Missile Agency" in Air and Space magazine. In 1998 Delacorte Press published an expanded version of the memoir as a book, the story of his life as the son of a coal miner in Coalwood, West Virginia. Rocket Boys has since been translated into numerous languages and released as an audiobook and electronic book. Among its many honors, it was selected by The New York Times as one of its "Great Books of 1998" and was an alternate "Book-of-the-Month" selection for both the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club. Rocket Boys was also nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as Best Biography of 1998. In February 1999, Universal Studios released its critically acclaimed film October Sky, based on Rocket Boys (The title "October Sky" is an anagram of "Rocket Boys"). In an interview, Hickam said of the movie that "I'm proud of the film [Director] Joe Johnston and [Producer] Chuck Gordon made. It has done a great job of encouraging young people to go after their dreams." He has since co-written a musical play entitled Rocket Boys the Musical, which, according to Homer Hickam, tells a story closer to the one in his book. Hickam's first fiction novel was Back to the Moon (1999), which was released as a hardcover, audiobook, and eBook. It has also been translated into Chinese. It is a techno-thriller and a romantic novel, telling the story of a team of "spacejackers" who commandeer a space shuttle.
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