Homer Hickam Jr.
Homer Hickam Jr. is an American author, a Vietnam War veteran, and a former NASA engineer. In this memoir, Hickam describes his coming of age in Coalwood, West Virginia.
*****
When Homer Hickam Jr. (nicknamed Sonny) is a boy in Coalwood, West Virginia in the mid-1900s, it's a 'company town.' Coalwood is run by a coal mining outfit that provides homes for the miners, as well as a church, pastor, doctor, dentist, and Big Store (general store). Boys in Coalwood grow up to join the military or work in the mine.....except for the occasional high school football player who gets a scholarship to college.
Outside view of coal mine in Coalwood, West Virginia
Coal miners in Coalwood, West Virginia
Coalwood in the 1930s. From left to right: doctor's office, clubhouse, post office, company store, offices, school
Sonny's father, Homer Hickam Sr., is the superintendent of the coal mine and spends most of his time at work. Hickam Sr. is intensely loyal to his employer despite the fact that mining is a terribly dangerous occupation. Sonny recalls, "Back then, I thought life in Coalwood was pretty ordinary, even though men died or were horribly maimed in the mine all the time. My grandfather, run over by a careening shuttle car, lost both his legs and lived in pain until the day he died. My father lost an eye to a snapped cable while trying to rescue trapped miners, though he kept on working for fifteen years afterward. He would eventually die of black lung, which is a polite way of saying he suffocated to death, his lungs choked with coal dust."
Homer Hickam Sr. (Homer's father)
Sonny's mother Elsie hates her husband's line of work, constantly begs him to quit, and doesn't want her sons to toil in the mine. Sonny's older brother Jim, who's a handsome, high school football star, seems likely to get away, but Hickam Sr. expects nearsighted, non-athletic Sonny to be a clerk for the mining company. This creates constant tension between Elsie and her spouse, who sleep in separate bedrooms. Sonny notes, "One of the things I used to think about was the cold war between my parents, a war that had been fought without cease all the days I had known them."
Elsie Hickam (Homer's mother)
Jim Hickam (Homer's brother)
As a youngster, Sonny was an imaginative boy who liked to play with his friends, watch movies, and read.
Young Homer Hickam Jr. (nicknamed Sonny)
Sonny's grade school teachers assigned Tom Sawyer and Uncle Tom's Cabin and Sonny himself chose Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. As Sonny got older, he read the classics for school and science-fiction for fun, foreshadowing his interest in the space race. Sonny recalls, "When I was a boy, one of my favorite places to go was a pine-filled hollow high on the mountain behind our house. It was a place where the industrial song of Coalwood subsided. I would sit on a dead log and listen to nothing except the beating of my own heart and the thoughts racing through my head."
The turning point in Sonny's life comes in 1957, when Sonny is a 14-year-old sophomore at Big Creek High School, and the Russians launch Sputnik - the first satellite in space. As Sonny watches the blip of light that's Sputnik soaring over West Virginia, he decides he wants to build rockets. At the same time, the United States launches a proto-STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) initiative, promoting math and science classes in schools across the country, including Big Creek High School.
Sputnik is launched on October 4, 1957
Teenage Homer Hickam Jr.
Sonny and his friends - Quintin, Roy Lee, Sherman, O’Dell, and Billy - form the 'Big Creek Missile Agency' and proceed to build and launch rockets. The boys name their rockets Auk, after the extinct flightless bird. Over the years, the boys launch Auk I, Auk II, Auk III.....through Auk XXXI. The first Auk doesn't get off the ground, but blows up Elsie's rose-garden fence. Still, Elsie encourages her son's hobby, telling him, "Show [your father] you can do something. Build a rocket." Conversely, Hickam Sr. strongly discourages his son's interest in rockets, and even disapproves of America joining the space race.
From left to right: Homer Jr. (Sonny), Quintin, Roy Lee, and O'Dell
Amateur Rocket
After the first rocket mishap, Homer realizes he needs to know a lot more about rocketry, and with the assistance of the high school chemistry teacher Miss Freida Riley - and several helpful mine engineers - Sonny and Quintin (perhaps the smartest member of the BCMA) slowly and incrementally learn geometry, trigonometry, calculus, differential equations, physics, rocket structure, rocket nozzle construction, rocket propulsion, fuel chemistry, and so on. Sonny comes to idolize Dr. Wernher von Braun, the German and later American aerospace engineer, who came to be seen as the father of space travel, the father of rocket science, and the father of the American lunar program.
Miss Freida Riley (chemistry teacher)
Dr. Wernher von Braun (the father of rocket science)
Needing a better launch arena than the backyard or the populated town, the BCMA builds a rocket center, called Cape Coalwood (after Cape Canaveral) on an isolated old dump site. The boys pour a cement launch pad and build a tin and timber blockhouse, to protect themselves during launches. The rocketeers raise money with paper routes and sales of ginseng root, and though Hickam Sr. seemingly disapproves of the rocket project, he (grudgingly) provides materials to the BCMA....perhaps secretly admiring his son's ambition. Still, members of the football team, including Sonny's brother Jim, regularly mock the boys of the BMCA, jeeringly calling them 'sisters' and making fun of their project.
Rocket Boys
Rocket Boys
Launch Site
Nevertheless, over time, as the Auk rockets slowly advance from rising a few feet off the ground to shooting six miles up (when the boys are high school seniors), the residents of Coalwood come to embrace the 'Rocket Boys.' Townsfolk attend the rocket launches and applaud the successes....and some football players even give grudging respect.
While the BMCA teens advance from sophomores to seniors, they also navigate adolescence. Sonny develops a huge crush on a girl named Dorothy Plunk, who likes him 'as a friend' but dates football players and college boys. Sonny learns to drive a car and is taught to open a girl's bra with one hand by his friend - would be lothario Roy Lee. Sonny attends youth dances, has his first kiss, loses his virginity to an 'older' girl, buys a bright orange suit (which is promptly returned), and even (inadvertently) gets help from a prostitute when he's stranded during a snowstorm.
In the meantime, there's trouble in Coalwood, with fears of the mine closing; mining accidents; tension between the mining company (represented by by Homer Hickam Sr.) and the employees union; resentment against Hickam Sr. for 'being too big for his britches'; layoffs; strikes; hardship; violence; death; and more. In addition, if a miner is killed on the job, his wife and children have two weeks to move out of the company house, which is a tremendous hardship for some families.
All this makes Sonny even more determined to move away from Coalwood, though Hickam Sr. continues to cherish the idea that Sonny will follow in his footsteps - perhaps becoming a mining engineer. This creates a rift between father and son that never really heals.
In time the BMCA (with Sonny as the lead representative) wins local, state, and national Science Fairs, thinking this will propel them to college and fulfilling careers.
Homer Hickam Jr. at the science fair
Things don't work out quite like this, but - in the end- we learn that all the BCMA boys were successful and one sadly died young from a heart attack. As we know, Sonny did go on to become a NASA engineer, as well as a successful author of this and other books.
Homer Hickam Jr. attended Virginia Tech in 1960 and joined the school's Corps of Cadets.
Homer Hickam Jr. in Vietnam
Homer Hickam Jr. at Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, Alabama)
This is an excellent coming of age story that encompasses many aspects of adolescence, including family relations, friendships, first love, girlfriends, heartache, hopes for the future, and more. I'm disappointed that Sonny's father was unable to reconcile with Sonny's aspirations, but happy that Sonny bonded with other 'father figures', especially the mine workers and mine engineers that encouraged him to follow his dreams. The story essentially ends with Sonny's graduation from high school, but Hickam's other books pick up the story from there.
This memoir inspired the 1999 movie 'October Sky' starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Homer Hickam Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment