Original 'Rocket Boy' Points Students Skyward

 Jacob Tucker, feature editor

Quentin Wilson grew up as a curious boy.  Little did he know, his curiosity would gain the attention of the entire nation.

Wilson was a ‘Rocket Boy.’  He acquired his fame alongside fellow students Homer Hickam, Jr., Willy Rose, Jimmy O’Dell Carroll, Roy Lee, and Sherman Siers.  They teamed together during the fall of 1957 to build rockets.

“We were curious boys who wanted to know how things worked,” said Wilson.

The group’s inspiration for the project was the launching of the Russian satellite, Sputnik.

“To tell you the truth, we did the project for all the attention we would get from the girls,” said Wilson, who was the keynote speaker during Texas Tech’s Engineering Week on February 20.  “Sputnik played a huge part, but girls liked rockets.  So, we liked rockets.”

Wilson grew up in a large family, in a poor home in Coalwood, West Virginia.  His family was comprised of 10 members, including eight children. His father suffered a mild stroke, which limited him to small jobs.  Quentin picked up the slack, working 20 hours or more per week in addition to attending school.

“Yes, I did grow up in a very poor family,” said Wilson.  “But I worked hard for our family to survive.”

While growing up, Wilson was a very curious child.  He liked to look at things and question how they worked.

“I bet I took apart every clock in our house just to see the insides,” said Wilson.  “Now whether they worked when I put them back together was another story.”

Wilson learned the value of education early.  He saw that there was no future without an education. If a person skipped out on their learning, they could possibly end up working in the fields or down in the mines.

“I didn’t want to go down in the mines,” said Wilson.  “I saw what it did to men, and I didn’t want that to be me.”

So, he kept his head in the books.  While he was earning money for his family’s survival, Wilson excelled in school with perfect grades. 

After junior high, Wilson went to high school at Big Creek.  It was there that he met Hickam and the rest of the gang.  Hickam pulled him aside and ‘recruited’ him to help with the rocket project.

“He [Hickam] found out that I was good at math and science,” said Wilson.  “So he asked if I would like to join them in building some kind of rocket.”

At the time, Wilson thought that the group was merely learning how to build and launch rockets.  He never believed that they would have great success with the project.

“I thought it was fun, and we were just trying things and learning from our mistakes,” said Wilson,  “similar to what a football team would do when practicing plays.”

According to Wilson, Hickam was a hands-on type of person.

“Homer liked to physically see how things worked; I was more of a theoretical person,” said Wilson.  “I didn’t like getting too close to the dangerous stuff.”

But Wilson had the dangerous job of mixing the fuel for the rockets.

“I brought the chemical aspect to the group,” said Wilson.  “But when it went off, I was sure that I was far away.  The only armor for exploding stuff is distance.”

The team began to design and build their rockets.  They named them the Auk, after a species of bird that was flightless.

The first few tries weren’t very successful, according to Wilson. 

“We learned quickly that the gunpowder in ammunition was not the same that was needed to launch a rocket,” said Wilson.

Wilson also recalled that, on one occasion, a shard of metal from an exploding rocket almost caught him in the head. 

The group tried everything while mixing up chemicals for propellant.  The majority of the chemicals were dangerous, and had taken the lives, or appendages, of other students who were experimenting with them.

“If our parents knew what we were doing down in Homer’s basement,” said Wilson, “they probably would have taken us outside and beaten us with a very large stick.”

After about 12 or 13 tries, the group finally got a rocket off the ground.

“We were stubborn,” said Wilson, “but we were persistent in our efforts.”

The Auk XXXI soared to an astonishing 31,000 feet, according to Hickam, though Wilson disagrees. 

“I thought that we only had enough fuel within the rocket to only go to about 15,000 feet, but that is my story, and I’m sticking to it,” said Wilson.

They later entered their project in the National Science Fair in 1960, and won the gold medal. 

Wilson was the only one out of the six boys who received a scholarship for college.  It was $300 that paid for tuition, books, and other fees.  Wilson attended to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.  He graduated with a major in chemistry and minors in both math and physics.  His parents support his idea of going to college, but they were not be able to aid him financially with the high costs of attending college.

“If it wasn’t for that scholarship, or student loans, I wouldn’t have gone to college,” said Wilson.

He then went to Crane, Texas, and rose quickly to the ranks of assistant engineer in the oilfields. 

“A position was open when I showed up in the field,” said Wilson.  “I was qualified, so they stuck me in it.”

When the oil business went into a tailspin, Wilson moved into the real estate business.  He slowly developed a nice, small business, but kept his eye on the oil industry.

“When the oil business went up, I went right back,” said Wilson.

Wilson now resides in Amarillo, and has been working with an independent oil company since 1984.  He continues to look back on his experiences as a Rocket Boy, which also can be read in Hickam’s memoir, “Rocket Boys.”

 “I’m glad Homer wrote the book,” said Wilson.  “I’m also glad that he left a good bit of what really happened out.”

Wilson also added that Hickam had a movie contract before he even finished the book. Two years after the book was released, the movie contract evolved into the film “October Sky.”  It starred Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper and Laura Dern.

“The core of the movie was based on our story, but Hollywood added a lot of extra fluff to make it interesting,” said Wilson.

Wilson watched the movie, and was disappointed how they portrayed his character.  In the film, he was seen by the world as a pimply, with ‘coke-bottle’ glasses, and shy, but in reality Wilson was not any of those things.

“I could spot a flea’s behind from about 200 yards away, so I didn’t need glasses,” Wilson laughs.  “Homer was the one with huge glasses and pimples.”

Another aspect of the movie that Wilson pointed out as inaccurate was the train scene.  In the movie, the boys pull up railroad tacks to get money for their project.  In real life, the boys dug up a cast iron culvert near an abandoned railroad.

“The director liked trains, so he just decided to put a train there for a little action,” said Wilson.  “We didn’t even dream of pulling up those tacks, but we sure did spend plenty of time digging up those culverts.”

Wilson added that the scrap from the culverts that they collected didn’t earn them much money.  He looks back and recalls the foolishness of the situation.

“If we would have realized that the railroad left those culverts there to rot, we would not have bothered digging them up,” said Wilson.

Although the movie was a hit in theatres, Wilson said he believes, as is true with any book converted into a movie, that the book was much better.

“The book had a way of adding color to the story,” said Wilson.  “I definitely recommend reading the book.”

Wilson credits all of his success in life to his education, and tells students and parents around the nation of the need to work hard.  He travels throughout the United States speaking about his experiences with the Rocket Boys, while also extolling the values of reading and education.

“Learning is self-motivated,” said Wilson.  “A teacher only facilitates to make sure you are doing it right, but you have to want to learn in order to achieve.”