Roy Lee Cooke

Roy Lee Cooke (born December 25, 1941) is an American who was a founding member of the Big Creek Missile Agency and one of the original Rocket Boys. His character in the Universal Pictures film October Sky was played by William Lee Scott. He is the son of Wiley Clay Cooke and Carrie Austin Cooke of Coalwood, in McDowell County, West Virginia.

When Cooke was 13, his father died at the age of 45, after working his entire adult life in the Coalwood mine. His mother then began working in the school cafeteria to support the two of them.

Cooke later attended Big Creek High School. It was there that Cooke and his friends Jimmy "O'Dell" Carroll, Homer Hickam, Jr., Billy Rose, Sherman Siers and Quentin Wilson formed the Big Creek Missile Agency. Cooke was a member of the football team, too, playing running back. In addition, he was active in a variety of clubs in high school. The thespian club named him best thespian during his senior year at BCHS.

After graduating high school, Cooke began his college career at Concord College in Athens, West Virginia. He later transferred to the University of Maryland where he earned a degree. He is also a graduate of the American Institute of Banking in Washington, D.C.

Now retired from banking after 25 years in that profession, Cooke has been President of Carolina Domestic Coal since 1986. He is the owner of The Cooke Company, a company devoted to bringing new businesses and venture capital into West Virginia.

He maintains a wide range of civic and business interests in the Appalachian area, including support of the West Virginia Access Center for Higher Education. Additionally, he has New Horizons Computer Learning Centers in several states, and started the Prodigy Foundation to support education and jobs in West Virginia. Each year, The Prodigy Foundation awards an outstanding teacher that has overcome great obstacles to be in that profession, The West Virginia School Teacher of the Year, in memory of Frieda Riley, his high school science teacher.

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