Biography
Homer H. Hickam, Jr. is the second son of Homer, Sr. and Elsie Gardener Hickam (née Lavender) and was raised in Coalwood, West Virginia. He graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960. While there, he led a group of boys who built rockets. They called themselves the Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA). After working on finding the perfect way to build rockets, they took their designs to the 1960 National Science Fair, where the BCMA won a gold and silver medal in the area of propulsion. Hickam graduated from Virginia Tech in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering. While at Virginia Tech he designed a cannon to be fired at games and during corps of cadets functions. The cannon was cast out of brass that had been collected from cadet belt buckles and caps, and scrap he got from his father, the superintendent of a coal mine. The cannon was named "The Skipper" after President John F. Kennedy and has become an icon for the Hokies. The Skipper is now retired and resides in honor in the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets Museum. After an incident in 1983, a second cannon "Skipper II" was cast to carry on the tradition of Virginia Tech.
A United States Army veteran, Hickam served as a First Lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry Division during the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968. For his service, he earned the Commendation and Bronze Star Medals. He served six years on active duty, leaving the Army as a Captain.
Hickam was an engineer for the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command from 1971 to 1978 assigned to Huntsville. For three years (1978–81), he was an engineer for the 7th Army Training Command in Germany. 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, Hickam worked in spacecraft design and crew training. His specialties at NASA included training astronauts on science payloads, and extra-vehicular 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. Prior to his retirement from federal service in 1998, Hickam was the Payload Training Manager for the International Space Station Program.
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