Quentin Wilson
Quentin Taylor Wilson was an American engineer and one of the original Rocket Boys, featured in the book October Sky, as well as the film adaptation October Sky, where he was portrayed by Chris Owen.Biography
Wilson was born in Warriormine, West Virginia, to Eston and Jessie Richardson Wilson, who had migrated to the coalfields of West Virginia from subsistence farms in Carter County, Tennessee, during the Great Depression. The Wilsons had eight children. Only six survived to adulthood, of which Quentin was third oldest, and eldest son.
Wilson attended Big Creek High School with Homer Hickam and the rest of the Rocket Boys. Together this group built several rockets and competed in a National Science Fair. After graduating from Big Creek, he attended Marshall College in Huntington, West Virginia, graduating with a major in Chemistry. He came to Texas to find work in the oil business.
He settled in Amarillo in 1973, as an independent engineer with Santa Fe Energy, and married Glenna Wilson, with whom he had three daughters, and later divorced and remarried Janice Birkholz, and continued to travel extensively speaking about the Rocket Boys' childhoods. Quentin died on August 30, 2019, in Amarillo, Texas.
