Another rocket boy tells of learning to love space in ’50s
by Rick Chappell

The new movie October Sky tells the story of Homer Hickam, a boy growing up in a West Virginia coal town. Vanderbilt’s Director of Science and Research Communications Rick Chappell became friends with Hickam when both were at NASA and Chappell was training as a backup crewman for a space shuttle flight. Chappell says he was touched on several different levels by Hickam’s book Rocket Boys and the movie made from it

Homer Hickam and I had a similar experience in terms of being attracted to space exploration. Homer grew up in West Virginia; his father worked in the coal mine and everybody around him was connected to the coal mine. When Russia launched Sputnik, Homer was thrilled by the idea that something could be put on a rocket and launched into space. He decided that he wanted to make rockets to launch things, as the Russians had done and he set out to do that.

Robert A. Vraciu

My life was also strongly influenced by the Sputnik launch as I was entering high school, and the response that America had to that: the decision later by President Kennedy that America was going to the moon. It ended up shaping my career as well as Homer’s. I wanted to be part of that great adventure. I came to Vanderbilt in 1961, the year that the president said we were going to the moon. I decided to study physics so that I could be in a position to contribute to the space program. I ended up going to Rice University and getting a Ph.D in space science, which led me to work first for the aerospace industry and ultimately for NASA for 25 years.

The book Rocket Boys and the movie October Sky are fascinating to experience for a number of different reasons. For one thing, the nostalgic descriptions of life, especially high school life in the late 1950s, really take you back. The discussion of the pink shirts, the collars turned up, the drag-racing cars, the chino pants with the buckles on the back; things like that bring back a world of emotion and memory.

A second aspect of it that really resonated with me was the interplay between the athletes and those in the school that probably would have been called the “geeks,” those interested in science and math. As a person who chose the science and math path, it was interesting to see that interplay. Homer’s brother was a football player and his father was always very attracted to the success of his brother in football and seemingly less interested in Homer’s success in things related to science and rockets. But the school and the town’s interest in science shifted dramatically with Homer’s rocket success.

Third, within the story, the father-son relationship is extremely touching and probably not different from the relationship that many sons growing up in that time period had with their fathers. Homer’s father was very dedicated to his work as superintendent in the mine and was seemingly less interested in what Homer was doing as a teen-ager. Homer was beginning to think about the direction his life might take and was extremely desirous of having his father say to him how proud he was of him and how much he loved him. Fathers in that time period didn’t always do a good job at that. Mine certainly found it difficult to communicate directly how he felt about the things that I did in school and my successes in life.

I think the final aspect of the story is something that shows this small town in West Virginia as a microcosm of America during this magic time of the space race. Coalwood was a mining town, everybody there worked in the mine or supported someone who did and that was their life, day after day after day.

When John Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade not because it is easy, but because it is hard,” that commitment gave the people of Coalwood and the people of America a big and exciting goal.

It brought out unique talents and skills in people and in many cases caused them to extend themselves past their limits. It gave a great spirit of accomplishment to the entire country. And it’s time to do that again.

It’s time for America to take on challenges that draw out the very best of our very best, and that serve as touchstones of creativity and energy that will produce new knowledge and technologies to benefit our country and our world.