So many radio stations played clips of Walter Cronkite reporting the lunar landing last weekend, eerie considering the timing of his death. But Cronkite always said the Space Mission was his favorite of all stories, his preference being for the triumphs over the tragedies. I always like to think of what my role is in triumphs, even if I can only get involved in the smallest.

It's an amazing revelation to Karl, the Indonesian cashier at the gas station store near me, that Americans were learning almost everything about the exploration effort as it occured, right down to the Astronauts on TV live. He tells me his home country isn't really an authoritarian state, but it ain't exactly an open society, either. And he has told me of the turn of events that leaves him with the goal of some day earning an American education, pretty much one class at a time, and returning as an old man with a PhD to teach his people.

So as he was growing up a Catholic boy in love with a Muslim girl, reality intervened in a rather Romeo and Juliette manner. leading to his banishment. Actually, the two families worked together to send him to America. His Father told him if he stayed in Indonesia he'd always be one of the almost comfortably poor; in the United States anyone can go to college. (I admit, I think a few of them shouldn't, but----) And with her somewhat more wealthy family secretly footing the bill (Not all Muslims use evil methods, okay?) this 19 year old rushed off with the dream of making something of himself in time to return home and convince her family. . . . (Insert your own romance here.)

But of course, it was slow going. When he got here, he had to work and pay for his own school, what little he had time for. He studied business as his Father wanted, but had such a long way to go 3 years later when he went home to visit --- and learned the love of his life was engaged to marry a man her family approved of.

In the U.S. Karl was alone, and felt even poorer than he had in Indonesia. He despaired of leaving home again, but his Father was insistent. Just as it all seemed so tragic, the family went to the movies together.

If you haven't seen 'October Sky,' it's based on the novel 'Rocket Boys.' A romanticized version of author Home Hickam's teen years building rockets with his friends in a mountain coal mining town in the last 1950's, and dreaming of winning the science fair as the start of finding a way to join the Space Program.

And indeed, Homer Hickam himself did, even as he, too, lost the girl of his dreams. Karl left the theater realizing that only in the United States could such a story happen. And his Father agreed he didn't HAVE to study business, that was just a starting point, after his AA degree Karl switched to studying Math and Physics.

More than 10 years after coming to America, Karl has some 3 years of college out of the way. I can do some pretty mean Trigonometry, but when he starts talking Calculus, I feel like Homer Simpson to his Homer Hickam. He still lives in wonder at a country where The Learning Channel and 'American Scientific' magazine are offered as ENTERTAINMENT. And he's still working more than one low paying job at a time, not quite paying his bills, and fitting a class in as he can. Still a long, long way to go. . . .

That's where I come in. Remember this is about me getting a small triumph. I never really made a living in Hollywood, but of the tens of millions who've tried, I'm definitely in the upper half. If that was my lone source of fulfillment, oh I would despair worse than Karl could have imagined at his low point. But I've also had time to be involved in rehabilitation and employability development. There's a lot of troubled people out there who could tell you they wouldn't have their current job, life, etc., if I hadn't, err, 'Interfered.' Dang, compared to them it was easy to match this guy up with the Northrop sponsored training program which trains people for jobs building the F18 Hornet airframe. You pass the class and the background check, you get the job, Northrop is way short of people to meet the production schedule, even now. And Northrop is loving the idea of getting their hands on a Physics major. There simply isn't enough of those. While they pay for his continued education, they have all sorts of other jobs they can send him over to later. He's on the fall waiting list, and if that doesn't work out, there's always January.

So if you've read 'Rocket Boys,' you know that it would be 25 years after high school before Homer Hickam would again see the girl he'd lost. By then he was a NASA engineer. Karl has over a decade to catch up with Homer before a 25 year reunion with his lost love. And maybe visit her family, too, who sound like people who would actually welcome the visit. He should at least be student teaching in his parttime graduate program by then. And I got him interested in such energy technology as weeds that grow readily in contaminated soil that might never be suitable for farming, but a fuel source can be extracted from them for less than a dollar a gallon. He says there's an area of nearly 100 square miles in Indonesia that's walled off, it's so badly contaminated. The government would probably hand him a deed to it.

Luckily Karl had began to tell me of how he was once again despairing of making his dreams come true. He'd hoped for some sort of 'Lab Assistant' job to give him a more stable life, hopefully pay a little more so he could get through school more quickly. But he didn't know where to find it. "I knew there were all these opportunities somewhere, but I had no idea how to even FIND them." And now another piece of his puzzle is in place. (Aren't we always better at aolving the problems of others' than of our own?)

And somewhere out there, Jake Gyllenhaal and others will never know just how many stories like this they've figured into, just by spending a few months of their time working on 'October Sky.' For the film to be so memorable, I'm sure it was more than just a job for weeks at a time to so many actors involved. For some it might be the one time they're involved in such a project.

And this is what can happen to you. You may never work on the planned mission to Mars, but you can take the people who made it possible and bring their story to life to so many who might never believe that it happened. There are still great moments waiting to be lived.

And someday decades away, an old professor will take his pension back to the home country he has only visited in his adult life, and he will tell so many children that he had really been no different from them by the time he had left. The wonder of how he went from building planes to growing weeds for fuel and teaching them will include how he hadn't really believed it was possible until he saw what to him is a very special movie.

But for these kids, such a film won't be 'October Sky.' It will be some new film at the time, not yet made as I write this. Perhaps I'll write it. Perhaps you'll star in it. Perhaps some future teacher will see it. . . .

(Oh, but you're going to have to stop fighting. That's such a counterproductive waste of energy. . . .)

quote:

Originally posted by Dauntless:
If you haven't seen 'October Sky,' it's based on the novel 'Rocket Boys.' A romanticized version of author Home Hickam's teen years building rockets with his friends in a mountain coal mining town in the last 1950's, and dreaming of winning the science fair as the start of finding a way to join the Space Program.

This is wild...

I just got through seeing 'October Sky' for the first time last night on the Movie Channel (was this Gyllenhaal's first feature?)! It was an incredible story, I couldn't stop thinking about it. That's why I found your story so thoroughly engrossing.

This is truly, "The Right Stuff."

www.robertkim.com
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