Who were the “Rocket Boys” and what did they accomplish?
The Rocket Boys were a group of six teenagers in southern West Virginia who were so excited when the Russians launched Sputnik I in 1957 that they formed a club called the Big Creek Missile Agency to learn how to build rockets. Big Creek was the name of their high school. The members of the BCMA were Homer “Sonny” Hickam (me), Quentin Wilson, Roy Lee Cooke, O’Dell Carroll, Billy Rose, and Sherman Siers. All of the boys except Quentin were from Coalwood. Quentin was from Bartley, a small coal camp a few miles away. All of our fathers worked in the coalmines and most of us had never traveled outside the state. Starting with no knowledge of how to build a rocket, we began to try to learn all we could. At first, we failed everything we tried. Gradually, we began to learn and soon we were building rockets that were going over 1,000 feet high. At first, the people of Coalwood opposed what we were doing because we made a lot of noise and smoke but after awhile, most Coalwoodians began to help
