by Homer Hickam
Even while I worked for NASA and managed Deep Space, my freelance writing continued. In 1989, my first book, Torpedo Junction, a military history of the battle against the U-boats along the American East Coast during World War II, was published by the Naval Institute Press. It became a national bestseller and I proudly placed it in the hands of my father, who had been forced to retire from the mine and move permanently with my mom to Myrtle Beach. He read my book carefully, and critically, and pronounced it “well researched.” Since my father was an avid and meticulous reader all his life, I took his comment as high praise. He died that fall, just before I began training the first Japanese astronauts. I had little time to mourn my father, which was the way he would have wanted it. I spent much of the next several years in Japan, where I met many wonderful people and fell in love with the country. In 1992, Spacelab-J flew and I was privileged to talk the astronauts through their science duties. One of the American astronauts I trained and talked to in orbit was Dr. Mae Jemison, the first American woman of color in space. I could only imagine how proud Reverend Richard and Floretta and Big Jeb would have been. Sadly, they did not live long enough to see it happen.
Although I’m certain he would have enjoyed hearing about my professional successes, I don’t believe the Reverend Richard would have been particularly proud of my personal life. I married and was divorced. The fault was mine. I think, however, the Reverend would have liked what happened next. I met Linda Terry, the daughter of an old Huntsville family. She was a diver, too, just returned to her hometown from a stint as a divemaster in the Caribbean. We soon began one of the longest engagements in the history of mankind. We were married thirteen years after we met. I wonder to this day why I waited so long. Linda is my helpmate, my assistant, my first editor, and the mother to our cats, all of whom we love dearly. When I suffered a serious bout of decompression sickness on the island of Guanaja in the Republic of Honduras, she personally went out on a limb for fifteen thousand more dollars than she had to get me home. NASA put me into their decompression chamber and I emerged, somewhat physically damaged but determined to return to diving. I did, in short order. I also realized I loved Linda and that we were meant to be together. Sometimes God has to reach out and give us a good shake, just to get our attention.
When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched with blurred optics, I joined the team that worked in the NBS to train the astronauts going up to repair it. It was pure hands-on, practical engineering work. Johnny Basso, Jake Mosby, Tom Musick, and my father would have admired it. We worked so hard and so long that often divers would fall asleep underwater. Once, I nodded off and fell from my perch on a mock-up of the Hubble, waking only when I hit the bottom of the tank. NASA’s finest post-Apollo moment came when Story Musgrave and his crew fixed the space telescope and opened its eye to time and the universe. The Hubble has changed the very way we understand who we, as citizens of Planet Earth, are, and of what we’re made, and where we are going. I am proud to have been one of thousands of dedicated engineers and scientists who designed, built, and then fixed this magnificent observatory.
When the Olympics were held in Atlanta, I was selected to run the Olympic torch through a portion of Huntsville. I had two goals: to not drop the torch or set my hair on fire. I succeeded in avoiding both disasters. A little later, I became the payload training manager for the International Space Station, and traveled to Europe and Russia to negotiate with the space agencies there on how we would train future astronauts and cosmonauts. Life was good. My writing was also going well, and I could see retirement approaching. After that, I figured to start writing full-time. But my future didn’t wait around for me to hit all my little milestones. Jeremiah’s wheel, which Reverend Richard loved to contemplate, was turning in the direction of a miracle.
In December 1994, the editor of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine called me with an urgent request for a short article for the next issue. I had the reputation of being a fast writer with aerospace lore at my fingertips. Could I please provide something overnight? Unfortunately, I had nothing prepared, but then I glanced at a small cylindrical object I was using as a paperweight. It was a sophisticated but tiny rocket nozzle. Its story was only a hazy memory. As I talked to the editor, pieces of it started to come back. “You know,” I told her, “when I was a kid—growing up in a place called Coalwood, West Virginia—would you believe it? We—some boys and I—we were miners’ kids—we built rockets. We won a medal—at a science fair . . . wait, it was the National Science Fair.” The editor was silent for a moment and then said, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, “Okay, if that’s all you’ve got. Write it and fax it to me and we’ll see.” I wrote the article in three hours, the memories tumbling out of places I had not looked at for decades. I didn’t remember everything, but enough for the two thousand words required. I sent in the fax and forgot about it. The next day the editor called. She loved it. Would I send pictures? The medal? Anything I had? The magazine was going with the story as an expanded feature.
I was surprised at her reaction, but I was to be absolutely astonished when the article came out. Letters and phone calls poured in from parents and students all over the country. The article had touched and inspired them, they said. My agent suggested there might be a market for a book about my days as a rocket boy in Coalwood. I agreed and began to work on it.
Since I was a full-time employee for NASA at the time, I had to write during late evenings, early mornings, and on weekends. I even wrote after-hours during travel. One chapter was written entirely in Moscow. But I kept writing, and as I wrote, Coalwood came alive again. The miners trudged up the old path to the mine, their lunch pails clunking against their legs, their helmets perched on their heads. Dad was there among them, wearing his old snap-brim hat and his cowhide coat, encouraging them. The people of the town bustled in and out of the company store and gathered on the church steps after Sunday services to gossip. My mother was in her kitchen, in her refuge in front of the big painted picture of the beach and the ocean. Chipper was there, giggling because he’d just eaten the family Bible. Dandy and Poteet waited in my basement laboratory, their tails wagging at the sight of me as I picked up and inspected the implements of my chosen trade, the high school rocket builder—the potassium nitrate and sugar, the zinc dust and sulfur, the moonshine we used as a propellant binder. In my room, there was my old desk and the book our Miss Riley had given the rocket boys, the one with all the answers written in a mathematical script no one believed we could learn but we had, against all odds. The church bell was ringing as once more we boys stood on the roof of the old Club House and peered through the telescope Jake Mosby had loaned us, to see once more the bands of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the craters of the moon. The old high school was there, the halls ringing with the excitement of youth, the classrooms echoing with our lessons, the awareness slowly dawning on us that we were the designated refugees of our town and our school, that we were being prepared to leave and never return.
To re-create the days of the rocket boys of the Big Creek Missile Agency turned out to be one of the most difficult things I had ever done. I reached as deeply as ever I could into my soul to bring them all back, all the miners and miners’ wives, the teachers and the preachers, the boys, and, of course, my parents, the most interesting people I would ever know.
Rocket Boys, the book that resulted, was published in the fall of 1998 to national and international acclaim. The following February, October Sky, the movie based on the book while it was still in its manuscript form, was released. My life took on profound change. All of a sudden, I was in demand for speeches all around the country. I was given many awards. Dan Goldin, the NASA administrator, hugged me. Astronauts who had walked on the moon met me with tears in their eyes and asked for my autograph. General Chuck Yeager, another West Virginia boy, took me flying. Hundreds of fans wrote me and told me how much they loved the book and the film. After I retired from NASA, I wrote another book, Back to the Moon, a scientific th
riller novel, and it was snapped up almost immediately by Hollywood. My publisher also asked me to consider writing a sequel to Rocket Boys, and I agreed. The result was The Coalwood Way, a memoir of the last Christmas I would know as a Coalwood boy, and this book.
Because of the popularity of my books and the movie, I am often invited back to West Virginia. When I first returned after many years’ absence, I was shocked by what I found. Although I knew the Coalwood mine had been closed in 1985, I had no idea that the town had suffered so horribly. Houses were abandoned, the Big Store and the Club House boarded up, the Coalwood School burned down by vandals, and there was no evidence that a coal mine had ever been there. During the intervening years, the federal government had come in and dismantled the tipple grounds and scrubbed the area clean. In the process, it destroyed much of my heritage, and that of the people of Coalwood. As I looked around, I realized what had happened in Coalwood had occurred throughout the coalfields of southern West Virginia. Entire towns had ceased to exist, been bulldozed, and buried. The population of McDowell County had decreased by two thirds. While the rest of the United States enjoyed an economic boom, southern West Virginia had endured an economic cleansing that made refugees of its people as bad or worse than in places such as Kosovo.
Today, however, there are a few glimmers of hope. Across from the Captain’s house there stands a small museum, celebrating not only the rocket boys but, more importantly, Coalwood’s mining heritage. A group of Coalwood citizens have also banded together to form the Cape Coalwood Restoration Association. Their first project was to rebuild our old rocket launch range. Amateur rocketry groups go there now to launch their rockets on what is considered nearly a holy site for rocketeers. Forty years after he was the governor during the rocket boys’ first career, Cecil Underwood was reelected and, partly because of the book and film, began to pay attention to McDowell County. Soon there was not a pothole to be found anywhere in the county, and signs saying WELCOME TO THE HOME OF THE ROCKET BOYS began to blossom like flowering rhododendron. Tourists began to arrive from all around the United States and the world to see and touch Coalwood. The guest book in the museum attests to the hospitality they have received. Red Carroll, the only surviving rocket boys father, acts as the unofficial tour guide for the town. In 1999, the first annual Rocket Boys Day in Coalwood was proclaimed by the governor, followed soon after by the first annual October Sky Festival. Coalwood endures, as it always has, but with a new vigor and a new pride. A place where the old ways are still sacred, it still has much to teach us. Perhaps that is why I was allowed to bring it alive again.
As for me, I hope to continue writing and entertaining my readers, and maybe even providing some occasional illumination on life as it was, is, or shall be. I am a lucky man and I know it. The Engineer of the Universe has looked after this Coalwood boy, don’t ask me why. The wheel of Jeremiah continues to turn with those great hands on it, shaping me, shaping us all. There are miracles everywhere, although sometimes they are concealed, not by God, but by our own eyes. All we need to do is look, and they will be seen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HOMER HICKAM is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller October Sky as well as the acclaimed follow-up to October Sky, The Coalwood Way. He is also the author of Back to the Moon and Torpedo Junction, as well as numerous articles for such publications as Smithsonian Air & Space and American History Illustrated. He lives with his wife in Huntsville, Alabama—Rocket City, USA.
ALSO BY HOMER HICKAM
Torpedo Junction
Rocket Boys (aka October Sky)
Back to the Moon
The Coalwood Way
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
The author has sought to trace ownership and, when necessary, obtain permission for quotations included in this book. Occasionally he has been unable to determine or locate the author of a quote. In such instances, if an author of a quotation wishes to contact the author of this book, he or she should contact him through the publisher.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the lyrics of Born Too Late. Words and music by Fred Tobias and Charles Strouse. Copyright Renewed © 1986 Charles Strouse Publications/Holee Music. Worldwide rights for Charles Strouse Publications administered by Helene Blue Musique Ltd. (ASCAP)
Copyright © 2001 by Homer H. Hickam Jr.
Map by David Lindroth, Inc.
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001032475
eISBN: 978-0-440-33447-7
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