Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared

and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

(Written in 1941)

A rocket won’t fly unless somebody lights the fuse!

(Jimmy “O’Dell” Carroll, one of the “Rocket Boys”)

What do dream of doing with your life? Where is your wellspring of inspiration? What “lights your fuse”? These are just some of the themes of Rocket Boys, a true story about an American boy whose dreams of a better life were ignited one chilly October evening over a half century ago as he gazed expectantly into a starlit sky to catch a glimpse of the first satellite to orbit the Earth.

Although Homer Hickam grew up in Coalwood, West Virginia, a small town whose existence was built on mining coal, his story of hope, persistence, and overcoming adversity is a universal one played out in countries around the globe. Rocket Boys is a story about faith, “a firm belief in something for which there is no proof,” hope in the unseen.

As fate and history would have it, Homer Hickam’s life has also been indelibly touched by Vietnam, a country filled with heart-wrenching and inspirational stories of faith, perseverance and victory against all odds, where he spent some time during the 1960s. In 2006, when I first screened October Sky, the Hollywood movie based on Mr. Hickam’s life story, for a group of university students in Hanoi, Homer asked me to share this message on his behalf:

To the people of Vietnam who have come to see October Sky: I feel honored that you have come to see my story. You should know that I came to your country years ago along with many other young Americans at a time of war. I arrived with so many misperceptions about you. I left with a profound love for Vietnam and the Vietnamese and I still cannot get you out of my mind. In so many ways, I have never left the emerald green valleys and mountains of the Central Highlands. They are as much a part of my history as Coalwood, the little mining town in the United States where I grew up.

As you will see, rockets were my passion when I was a boy. That passion led me to a wonderful future. I hope the movie will help you to see the marvelous possibilities we all have within ourselves. To succeed first requires a dream so please, please dream big. Then, along with eternal optimism and hope, hard work will make your dream come true. This is my promise to you.

Homer Hickam’s youthful passion was building rockets with his friends and his dream was “to slip the surly bonds of Earth” by becoming an astronaut. Later, it was his experience in Vietnam and that day in 1969 when, after returning home, he began to pursue another passion of his: writing. Defying F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous quote that “There are no second acts in American lives,” Homer Hickam later segued from a successful career as a NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) engineer into that of a best selling author when his second book, Rocket Boys, was published in 1998. It has since been translated into eight languages and is studied in many U.S. and international schools.

As a child of the 1960s, my imagination was captured by space flights and trips to the moon. These extraterrestrial adventures through which I lived vicariously contributed to my sense of what human beings were capable of and what was possible. That, along with travel and contact with people different from me, lit a fire deep inside and helped me to envisage other worlds and ways of being and doing that laid out a personal and professional path before me.

For Homer the ingredients of success were many and varied. A combination of hard work, belief in himself and his abilities. The support of role models and mentors - a famous rocket scientist he never got the chance to meet, a parent who provided unconditional love and nurturing that helped keep his dream alive, a teacher who recognized his potential and chose to “believe in the unlucky ones,” for whom higher education was a form of liberation and salvation, learning from failure, a community that ultimately rallied behind him, and a close-knit group of friends, soul mates, who shared his vision of a life that veered away from the path that most chose, or was chosen for them. Homer was even driven to succeed by those who begrudged him their support, including some closest to him.

These transformative influences enabled Homer Hickam to break the bonds of his insular childhood. It is why he learned how to build rockets that could fly, won the (U.S.) National Science Fair, attended college, became a NASA engineer (alas, not an astronaut, but someone who helped others defy gravity and lift off into space), and, ultimately, a professional writer, fulfilling the prophesy of his third grade teacher, who predicted he would some day make his living as a writer.

I first met Homer Hickam, virtually speaking, in 2006, when I sent him an e-mail and received a quick reply, a poignant testament to the power of the Internet and Vietnam to bring people together. I extended an invitation, from one American here in a time of peace and progress to another who was here in a time of war and dislocation, to meet with me if he ever planned on traveling to Vietnam. His initial reply was “maybe something will happen that will lead to my return. If so, I look forward to a new adventure in an old place.”

So it is through this serendipitous chain of events that the story comes full circle and the “new adventure in an old place” becomes a reality with the publication of a Vietnamese edition of Rocket Boys and Homer Hickam’s 2009 visit to Vietnam. Is it destiny? Perhaps. What I know for sure is that it is a precious gift to the young people who read his book and hear his message about turning dreams into reality, and to Mr. Hickam, who once wrote to people here: “Please be happy and prosperous, my dear friends of Vietnam. You will live in my heart forever.”

Mark A. Ashwill[2]

Hanoi, Vietnam