 Homer Hickam has been a writer since he was in the third grade in the little mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. That was when his teacher read one of his short stories and told him, “Some day, Sonny, you’ll make your living as a writer.”
It turned out to be absolutely correct.
“Writing is my greatest passion. There are many things in life I could live without, but I have to write,” Hickam said in a 2002 interview.
Hickam, the author of eight best sellers, including the internationally acclaimed memoir, Rocket Boy, which was made into the film October Sky, will visit Paducah October 24 to help conclude the community’s One Book, One Campus, One Community reading project.
The project begins September 11 with a 7 p.m. free screening of October Sky at Maiden Alley Cinema.
October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys, which tells the story of Hickam’s life as a teenager growing up in a mining town where everything was dying except his dreams of building high-flying rockets. The novel was selected as the first book in the community project designed to encourage reading throughout the McCracken County and Paducah community.
Homer Hadley Hickam, Jr. was born on February 19, 1943, the second son of Homer, Sr. and Elsie Hickam. His father was a coal miner who spent much of his life as the manager of a mine in Coalwood, West Virginia.
After graduating from college as an engineer and serving a tour of duty in Vietnam in the 4th Infantry Division, Homer decided to approach life as if it were an adventure to be savored. For years, he was a scuba instructor who traveled the world. He also worked for NASA, where one of his jobs was to train the astronauts underwater to prepare them to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
Hickam said writing has always been a vital part of his life. “I didn’t realize that until I came back from Vietnam in 1968. There was a great void in my life,” he said. “I realized it was my need to write and so I began a long freelance career while working as an engineer.”
In 1989, Hickam’s father died from complications of black lung disease while his son was on vacation in the Caribbean. Hickam’s mother did not contact him, and had his father cremated before Hickam returned to the states. Though his mother would tell him little about the death, Hickam was able to learn from hospital officials his father’s horrible last hours as macroscopic coal dust, the product of years working in the mines, clogged his lungs and slowly suffocated him.
Hickam said he struggled to find meaning in his father’s death as well as in his own reaction to it, noting that he had never cried about his father’s death. It wasn’t until a freelance writing assignment sparked memories of his time as a teenager building rockets in West Virginia and lead to the publishing in 1998 of Rocket Boys did the author find a resolution and reconciliation.
Hickam said his book was written for those individuals who had parents who came out of the Depression and fought World War II and struggled from the day they were born. “It was written for all of us who watched our parents sacrifice in a million ways every day so that we might have a better life. It was written for all of us who observed by deed every day how much our parents loved us but never experienced it through touch or word. It was written for all of us who have tried our entire lives to find a way to reconcile that dichotomy,” he said.
To write the memoir, Hickam had to reach deep into himself and bring back all the characters of a time long gone by – all the miners and miners’ wives, teachers, preachers and each of the boys who built the rockets. “It was worth the journey, at least to me,” he said. “My father died without me and I was neither needed or wanted. But I know now, and will forever know because I wrote this book, that it was all right.”
 |
Homer and Linda Hickam |
Hickam now pursues his hobby of amateur paleontology, and a few years ago discovered what might be a new species of T-Rex. He and his wife, Linda, share their time between homes in Huntsville, Alabama and the Virgin Islands.
Rocket Boys has been selected as the “One Book, One Community” main book read in cities and communities nationwide.
Hickam said he has been surprised his book has become what he called, “ a cultural phenomenon that transcends its author.” He said the greatest misperception about the book is that it is about rockets and space flight. “Certainly, the book has a strong thread about boys dreaming of space and boldly building rockets from scrap, but there is a larger, more important story,” Hickam said. “…Small towns with people who care, good friends, understanding and reconciliation between parents and children… is what I believe Rocket Boys/October Sky is really about.”
For information a list of activities planned or more information about the One Book, One Campus, One Community project in Paducah/McCracken County, go to www.westkentucky.kctcs.edu/onebook.
*Photographs provided courtesy of Homer Hickam |
