{"id":68,"date":"2022-03-12T16:00:04","date_gmt":"2022-03-12T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birminghamrocketboys.com\/?page_id=68"},"modified":"2022-03-12T16:00:04","modified_gmt":"2022-03-12T16:00:04","slug":"parade-article","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/birminghamrocketboys.com\/index.php\/parade-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Parade Article"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Where Spirits & Rockets Soar<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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It is a sunny morning in Birmingham, Ala., and the sky is filled with colorful rockets. Rashad, 8, strains his eyes, searching for the tiny missile he launched just seconds before on a plume of white smoke. \u201cI see it!\u201d he cries and scampers across the grass after the rocket, now dangling from a red-and-white parachute and drifting slowly to earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen him run so fast or grin so big!\u201d says Rashad\u2019s mother, Patricia Agee, a single parent who struggles to keep her children away from neighborhood gangs and drug dealers. Beside her, Ron Witherspoon\u2014the man who runs these weekend launches\u2014nods. \u201cWe\u2019ve got him,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got your young man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Witherspoon then encourages Rashad to join the Birmingham Rocket Boys, the club he founded to get young people at risk to aim high in life. \u201cI find them wherever I can\u2014on the streets, in schools and in detention centers,\u201d says Witherspoon, 57, a church youth minister and county juvenile officer. \u201cThen I give them something they never imagined they could have: a passion for science and a belief in themselves, all wrapped up in the fun of model rocketry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His passion is fueled by personal experience as well. Witherspoon, who has five children, believes he could have done a better job as a parent. \u201cI got too busy and lost a couple of my children to the streets,\u201d he admits. \u201cThen their kids got into trouble. That\u2019s why my wife and I are raising our great-granddaughter. I\u2019m going to help every kid I can. Rocketry is my answer, and it\u2019s working.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longtime space buff, Witherspoon learned rocketry in California. When he returned to his home state, he and his best friend, Trennon Nickerson, started building rockets at Birmingham Landfill, where Nickerson worked. It became their Cape Canaveral. Word spread, though there was some initial skepticism. \u201cBlack people in Birmingham didn\u2019t build rockets,\u201d notes Witherspoon, laughing. \u201cBut we were good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was inspired to form his club in 2003 after learning the story of some youngsters in a West Virginia mining town who built rockets. \u201cThey didn\u2019t let anything stop them,\u201d Witherspoon explains. \u201cThen all of them went to college. I got the message!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The club, which welcomes the young and old, is under the auspices of the National Association of Rocketry, a group dedicated to teaching the science under safe conditions. Two real rocket scientists from NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center\u2014Vince Huegele and Chuck Pierce\u2014volunteer their time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educators say that model rocketry teaches organization, communication skills and teamwork. It also instills confidence. \u201cWhen my students build rockets and fly them, they learn surprising things,\u201d says Jeffrey Willis, an eighth-grade teacher who works closely with Witherspoon. \u201cFor instance, they wanted to know how high their rockets flew. So I told one student to get the angle at the top of the flight. Then we all figured out the altitude. I asked, \u2018Have you ever heard of trigonometry?\u2019 They all thought it was something hard to learn. When I told them they had just worked a trig problem, you should have seen how happy they were! That\u2019s all it takes. That one spark.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMost of the kids I see in detention centers don\u2019t have fathers at home, and some have no parents at all,\u201d says Witherspoon. \u201cBut when I mention rockets, their eyes go bright. When I show them video or photos of our launches, there are all these oohs and ahs! It\u2019s like one switch gets turned off\u2014the one that fills them with rage\u2014and another gets turned on. They start to see possibilities and find passion inside themselves for something good. They start looking up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homer Hickam is the best-selling author of \u201cRocket Boys,\u201d on which the movie \u201cOctober Sky The Birmingham Rocket Boys are grateful for the wonderful Parade article that was written by Homer Hickam Jr., who is a dear friend and supporter of our club. We are also grateful for the Parade editors and staff who found our story worthy to publish in their popular nationally syndicated magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by Homer\u2019s movie \u201cOctober Sky\u201d and his book \u201cRocket Boys\u201d , we set out to start a club whose ultimate goal was to teach kids how to build and safely fly model rockets. As a chartered section and proud member of the National Association of Rocketry, we are dedicated to this task.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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