October Sky is one of those uplifting, inspirational movies where you don’t mind a bit even when you see story developments coming well in advance; it leaves you choked up or wanting to cheer no less than if you’d been totally surprised. It’s a lot like Rudy (another movie well worth renting if you haven’t seen it already) — a fact-based story about a young man who dreams of a better life, and works until he gets it.

In October Sky the focus is on Homer Hickam, a high school student in a 1950s coal-mining town (Coalwood, W.Va.) who is inspired to become a rocket engineer when he sees news coverage of the Sputnik satellite launch. Soon he and his friends start building their own rockets and aim to enter a science fair which holds out the prospect of college scholarships for the winners.

Standing in their way is not just the technical challenge of mastering their craft but the skepticism of townsfolk who can’t believe that any of them will ever escape the coal miner’s life, much less go to college — unless (like Homer’s older brother) they win a football scholarship. And while Homer and his crew win many of them over in due course, they find some people especially hard to persuade, foremost among them Homer’s father, who wants his son to join him in the mines. (The strained father-son relationship provides the film’s biggest source of dramatic tension.)

One of the virtues of October Sky is that while it’s told from Homer’s viewpoint, it never looks down on the uneducated townsfolk, or at adults in general. Homer’s sometimes-stern father is shown as an honest, courageous man with strong opinions, not an overbearing tyrant. The rest of the adults display a range of reactions, from support to disapproval, but (with the exception of one boy’s drunken and abusive stepfather, in a minor role) there are no villains to speak of. Most are basically decent, hardworking folk coping with the only life they know.

In short, October Sky treats the sort of people who built this country with respect — both the ones who worked with their hands and the ones who worked with their heads. That doesn’t mean the movie’s neutral about the sort of work it prefers; the dark, depressing and dangerous coal mines are clearly a place to be escaped by academic diligence. But the film honors education and the people who attain it without patronizing or berating other people who, through no fault of their own, lack it.

October Sky isn’t the sort of movie that gets Oscar nominations, and not only because it lacks big-name stars. Some critics got its message and liked it; Roger Ebert called it "a film of great warmth and deep values," and noted that even "in breaking free, [Homer] is respecting his father." Others disliked the film for those same values; the New York Times sneered that it was from "the Horatio Alger-Norman Rockwell school of movie making."

Yet what the Times meant as an insult strikes me as a high compliment. October Sky may not be hailed in movie history, but I think it’s really a great American story. And it holds special meaning for me because in many ways, it’s my family’s story.

My Dad grew up in a coal-mining town where no one seriously thought they had options beyond the blackness and soot of the mines. He wouldn’t accept that fate, and devoured books both out of fascination and determination to go on to college. And the similarities don’t end there. Like Homer, his father was a good man who feared his son’s academic ambitions were a pipe dream. Like Homer, his mother lacked formal education but embraced learning and culture and encouraged her son to do the same.

Men like Dad and Homer faced obstacles most of us today, raised in relative comfort and ease, can’t readily imagine. But I for one have a better understanding of what their lives were like after seeing October Sky. The gloomy prospect of spending your days in the mines, the excitement of discovering a new world full of vast possibilities, the striving to make your dream a reality — all the things that marked my Dad’s life as a young man were brought home to me.

My Dad died nearly two decades ago, when I was just starting college. But his legacy to me lives on. Because of him, I grew up surrounded by books and never doubting I could go to college. The life I live now — the opportunity to do what I love (writing) for a living, to read and savor quality writing and thinking — all that I owe it to Albert Kaufman Jr., who wouldn’t let his environment predestine the course of his life.