Homer Hickam to Receive VVA Excellence in the Arts Award

Virginia (I-Newswire) August 15, 2011 - Homer Hickam, the New York Times best selling author perhaps best known for his highly acclaimed memoir Rocket Boys—and the movie version, October Sky starring Hollywood heartthrob Jake Gyllenhaal as Hickam—will receive the VVA Excellence in the Arts Award at Vietnam Veterans of America’s 15th biennial National Convention on Saturday night, August 20, in Reno NV.

“Homer Hickam is one of our most accomplished authors, and VVA is honored that he is coming to join us in Reno,” VVA National President John Rowan said. “We will be honoring him for his many books, and for his service in the Vietnam War with the 4th Infantry Division.”

Hickam, who was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia, entered the U.S. Army after graduating from Virginia Tech in 1964. He served in Vietnam from 1967-68, where, among other awards, he received the Bronze Star. Hickam left the Army after serving six years on active duty, went on to a long and distinguished career with NASA, and began writing. His early writing started with magazine feature stories and his first published book, Torpedo Junction, the historical account of the U-Boat battles off the North Carolina coast during WWII.

He has gone on to author a dozen books. Rocket Boys (1998), which tells the story of Hickam’s youth in West Virginia, was met with instant critical and popular acclaim, landing at #1 on the New York Times best seller list and has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. The hit film October Sky followed in 1999, also with rave reviews.

Hickam’s other best sellers include the novel Back to the Moon, additional memoirs including The Coalwood Way and Sky of Stone, a trilogy of WWII fiction novels (the Josh Thurlow series), Red Helmet, set in the modern day West Virginia coalfields and this year’s The Dinosaur Hunter, a fictional account of paleontologists hunting for dinosaur bones in the Montana badlands. Hickam himself spends each summer there, and has unearthed a remarkable 3 T-Rex skeletons to date.

Hickam’s Rocket Boys has been retooled as a Broadway-bound musical, with upcoming performances starting August 26th by the New York-based production team, in conjunction with Theatre West Virginia at their outdoor amphitheater, with Hickam himself appearing opening weekend. He also will participate in the annual October Sky Festival, Saturday October 1st in his hometown of Coalwood WV with the other Rocket Boys, members of the Rocket Boys The Musical cast and thousands of fans from around the world who descend annually on the tiny hamlet in the southern West Virginia coalfields.

Vietnam Veterans of America will hold its 15th biennial National Convention August 17-20 at the Silver Legacy Hotel in Reno. Some eight hundred delegates from VVA chapters across the country are expected to join hundreds of other Vietnam veterans and guests in Nevada at the event. The delegates will set the organization’s course for the next two years, hear from an array of speakers, attend information sessions, and take part in special events.
Other special guests scheduled to take part in the Convention include Keynote Speaker Richard Pimentel, the disabled Vietnam veteran who is one of the nation’s foremost disability rights advocates; and the entertainers Gloria Loring, Vicki Lawrence, and Diana Dell, who will also receive VVA Excellence in the Arts awards at the Convention’s culminating event, the Saturday Night Awards Banquet.

Vietnam Veterans of America is the nation’s only congressionally chartered veterans’ service organization dedicated to the needs of Vietnam-era veterans and our families.

VVA’s founding principle is, “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.”

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