In his junior year, he and a few classmates designed a cannon for football games and school functions. Hickam attended Virginia Tech in 1960 and joined the school's Corps of Cadets. After many generations of designs, they qualified for the 1960 National Science Fair and won a gold and silver medal in the area of propulsion. He and friends Roy Lee Cooke, Sherman Siers, Jimmy O'Dell Carroll, Billy Rose, and Quentin Wilson became amateur rocket builders and called themselves The Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA). He was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia, and graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960. and Elsie Gardener Hickam (née Lavender).
His books have been translated into many languages. Hickam's body of written work also includes several additional best-selling memoirs and novels, including the 'Josh Thurlow' historical fiction novels, his 2015 best-selling Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, his Wife, and her Alligator and in 2021 the sequel to Rocket Boys titled Don't Blow Yourself Up: The Further Adventures and Travails of the Rocket Boy of October Sky.
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. (born February 19, 1943) is an American author, Vietnam War veteran, and a former NASA engineer who trained the first Japanese astronauts.
