Homer H. Hickam Jr.

In February 2018, Hickam was appointed by Vice President Mike Pence to serve as a member of the Users Advisory Group of the National Space Council, which had been re-established by President Donald Trump in June 2017.

In 2016, Hickam sued Universal Studios for fraud and breach of contract over rights to his Rocket Boys sequels, including The Coalwood Way, Sky of Stone, We Are Not Afraid, and Carrying Albert Home. The lawsuit was settled in 2017 to Hickam's satisfaction. A lawsuit in federal court was initiated in 2017 for alleged copyright infringement by the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and its writers and composers of Rocket Boys the Musical, Hickam's musical play based on his memoir Rocket Boys.

His latest work, published in October, 2015, is the critically acclaimed novel Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, his Wife, and her Alligator. While working on his writing career, Mr. Hickam was employed as an engineer for the U. S.

In 2014, Hickam won the Appalachian Heritage Writer's Award at Shepherd University.

In May 2013, Hickam opposed a zero tolerance policy at Bartow High School which resulted in the expulsion of a student whose science experiment had caused a small explosion.

In 2010, Hickam received the Audie Murphy Patriotism Award at the Spirit of America Festival.

In 2007, Hickam was awarded an honorary doctorate in Literature from Marshall University. That same year, he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from Virginia Tech.

The series began with The Keeper's Son (2003), and then continued with The Ambassador's Son (2005) and The Far Reaches (2007). To meet the requests from publishers for a Young Adult series, Homer also wrote his Helium-3 novels titled Crater, Crescent, and Crater Trueblood and the Lunar Rescue Company. These two series have been heavily praised by critics and readers as have Homer's novel about a coal miner's wife in Red Helmet, and a thriller set in modern-day Montana titled The Dinosaur Hunter.

An associated book about Coalwood was published in 2002, a self help/inspirational tome titled We Are Not Afraid: Strength and Courage from the Town That Inspired the #1 Bestseller and Award-Winning Movie October Sky. Mr. Hickam is also the author of a popular series of novels that feature Josh Thurlow, a Coast Guard officer during World War II.

His third Coalwood memoir, a true sequel, was published in October 2001.

It is titled Sky of Stone (2001).

The Coalwood Way (2000), a memoir of Mr. Hickam's hometown he calls "not a sequel but an equal," was published by Delacorte Press and is available in abridged audio, eBook, large print and Japanese. It was an alternate "Book-of-the-Month" selection for Doubleday book club.

In February, 1999, Universal Studios released its critically-acclaimed film October Sky, based on Rocket Boys (The title October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys). Delacorte subsequently released a mass market paperback of Rocket Boys, re-titled October Sky. October Sky reached the New York Times # 1 position on their best-seller list. Mr.

Hickam's first fiction novel was Back to the Moon (1999) that was also simultaneously released as a hardcover, audio book, and eBook. It has also been translated into Chinese.

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 also released as an abridged audio book and electronic book.

Among it's many honors, it was selected by the New York Times as one of its "Great Books of 1998" and was an alternate "Book-of-the-Month" selection for both the Literary Guild and Doubleday book clubs.

Rocket Boys was also nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as Best Biography of 1998.

Prior to his retirement in 1998, Mr. Hickam was the Payload Training Manager for the International Space Station Program.

This resulted in his first book, Torpedo Junction (1989), a military history best-seller published in 1989 by the Naval Institute Press.

In 1984, Mr. Hickam was presented with Alabama's Distinguished Service Award for heroism shown during a rescue effort of the crew and passengers of a sunken paddleboat in the Tennessee River. Because of this award, Mr.

He began employment with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Marshall Space Flight Center in 1981 as an aerospace engineer. During his NASA career, Mr. Hickam worked in spacecraft design and crew training. His specialties at NASA included training astronauts on science payloads, and extravehicular activities (EVA). He also trained astronaut crews for many Spacelab and Space Shuttle missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope deployment mission, the first two Hubble repair missions, Spacelab-J (the first Japanese astronauts), and the Solar Max repair mission.

Army Missile Command from 1971 to 1981 assigned to Huntsville, Alabama, and Germany.

Hickam served six years in the U.S. Army and was honorably discharged at the rank of captain in 1970.He served in the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968 as a first lieutenant and combat engineer with C Company, 704th Marintenance Battalion, 4th Infantry Division. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation Medal, and Army Meritorious Unit Commendation ribbon.

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.

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.

Homer H. Hickam, Jr. , the second son of Homer and Elsie Hickam, 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.

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 memoir Rocket 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 and his 2015 best-selling Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, his Wife, and her Alligator. His books have been translated into many languages.