Friday, April 12, 2002
7:00 p.m.
Joan C. Edwards Playhouse in the Fine Arts Building. 
Tickets are required for the Joan C. Edwards Playhouse. Tickets are not required to watch the event on a large screen in the Booth Experimental Theater. 

Tickets are available in the Center for Academic Excellence. 

Book signings by the Rocket Boys will follow the presentation. 

Keynote speaker: Homer Hickham

Homer H. Hickam, Jr. was born and raised in the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia.  He graduated from Big Creek High School and continued on to the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering.  A U.S. Army veteran, Hickam served as a First Lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1967 and 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, and was employed as an engineer for the U.S. Army Missile Command.

He began his career with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama as an aerospace engineer.  Prior to his retirement in 1998, Hickam was the Payload Training Chief for the International Space Station Program.  He worked in the areas of propulsion, spacecraft design, and crew training.  His specialties included training astronauts on science payloads, and extravehicular activities (EVA).  He 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 training of Japanese astronauts), and the Solar Max repair mission.

A free-lance writer, Hickam has published extensively, including articles in Smithsonian Air & Space magazine.  He is the author of Torpedo Junction, a military history best seller published in 1989 by the Naval Institute Press.  Hickam’s novel, Back to the Moon, is a techno-thriller.  Hickam’s best-selling book, Rocket Boys, was made into the critically acclaimed movie October Sky in 1999.  He penned two more memoirs, The Coalwood Way and Sky of Stone, about his boyhood adventures in the mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia.  We Are Not Afraid! is Homer Hickam’s latest book.  Filled with simple homespun wisdom, this book encourages readers to find the courage to deal with their fears, both real and imagined. 

Special Guests 

The Rocket Boys:  Jimmie O’Dell Carroll, Roy Lee Cooke, Willie Rose, Quentin Wilson and Emily Sue Buckberry, high school friend and diction coach for October Sky.