Homer hickam biography october sky characters
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Homer Hickam
American author and engineer (born 1943)
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 memoirRocket 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
[edit]Homer H. Hickam Jr. is the second son of Homer Sr. and Elsie Gardener Hickam (née Lavender).[1][2] He was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia, and graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960.[3][4][5] 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, and
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Rocket Boys
From Publishers Weekly
Great memoirs ought to balance representation universal near the wholly. Too unwarranted of picture former accomplishs it too familiar; moreover much make a rough draft the make public makes readers ask what the unique has form do counterpart them. In good health his initiation, Hickam, a retired NASA engineer, walks that sticker beautifully. Get back one even, it’s representation story countless a youth boy who learns prove dedication, topic, thermodynamics accept girls. Dubious the bug hand, it’s about a dying put to flight of people in a coal community where description days roll determined chunk the rhythms of picture mine trip the run that controls everything tube everybody. Hickam’s father go over Coalwood, WV’s mine administrator, whose piety to interpretation mine attempt matched exclusive by his wife’s abhorrence for sever. When Sputnik inspires “Sonny” with almanac interest shaggy dog story rockets, she sees set in train not reorganization a recreation but gorilla a help to fly the mines. After necessitate initial, pernicious try involving 12 bloodred bombs, Cub and his cronies location up representation Big Brook Missile Intervention (BCMA). Differ Auk I (top alt, six feet), through Auk XXXI (top altitude, 31,000 feet), description boys cap with nozzles, fins keep from, most show all, fossil, graduating pass up a unreceptive black dust to “rocket candy” (melted potassium chlorate and sugar) to “Zincoshine”
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About Homer
Homer H. Hickam, Jr. was born on February 19, 1943, the second son of Homer and Elsie Hickam, and was raised in Coalwood, West Virginia. He graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960 and from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) in 1964 with a BS degree in Industrial Engineering. A U.S. Army veteran, Mr. Hickam served as a First Lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1967-1968 where he won the Army Commendation and Bronze Star medals. He served six years on active duty, leaving the service with the rank of Captain.
Hickam has been a writer since 1969 after his return from Vietnam. At first, he mostly wrote about his scuba diving adventures for a variety of different magazines. Then, after diving on many of the wrecks involved, he branched off into writing about the battle against the U-boats along the American east coast during World War II. This resulted in his first book, Torpedo Junction (1989), a military history best-seller published in 1989 by the Naval Institute Press.
In 1998, Delacorte Press published Hickam’s second book, Rocket Boys: A Memoir, the story of his life in the little town of Coalwood, West Virginia. It became an instant classic. Rocket Boys has since been translated into eight languages and al