Homer Hickam
Homer Hickam grew up in the coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. As a teenager, he was inspired by the dawn of the space age with the 1957 launch of Sputnik I; he and his fellow rocket boys began building and launching rockets. With encouragement from his teacher Miss Riley, that passion for learning, experimenting, and daring to dream became the foundation for his memoir Rocket Boys, later adapted into the beloved film October Sky.
After high school, Hickam went on to Virginia Tech, where he joined the corps of cadets and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, and later joined NASA, contributing to projects that helped train astronauts and support missions like the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope.
He has also been a coal miner, scuba instructor, and an avid amateur paleontologist.