"The biggest obstacle is not poverty or life's circumstances, said Frederick, but not believing in your own talents and abilities."
Rocket scientist and disciple Jack Frederick shares inspiration to students in Missoula, Montana.
From the original article in The Missoulian by reporter Jamie Kelly This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Permission requested
Developing good character, a direction in life and a moral center isn't exactly rocket science.
And Jack Frederick would know. Raised in abject poverty in the South in the 1950s, with a father who wasn't there and five brothers who attended the same poor, tiny school, Frederick's early life wasn't exactly a blueprint to the stars.
But that's where he went anyway.
On Wednesday, the former NASA rocket scientist and now chief systems engineer for the Raytheon Co. - and the leader of its Patriot missile program - told Missoula students how science and math helped him live a life he still can't quite believe.
But it's the human characteristics of reliability, honesty, humility, integrity and compassion that, in the end, mean the most, he told students at Willard Alternative High School.
"What you achieve with your life will not depend on what you start with," said Frederick, who was invited to Missoula by his friend Jake Jensen, pastor at the Five Valleys Church of Christ.
If that were the case, he told a riveted audience of 150 at the school, he would never have gone on to complete his degree in chemical engineering, never have begun testing and designing rockets, never have led the team that developed the Patriot missile, used in both Iraq wars to shoot down missiles launched by Saddam Hussein.
The biggest obstacle is not poverty or life's circumstances, said Frederick, but not believing in your own talents and abilities.
"You are certainly smart enough," he said, as he shared a PowerPoint presentation with the students. "You've got skills that your teachers are helping you develop."
Frederick also spent time at Meadow Hill and Cold Springs schools on Wednesday, and will also speak to 441 students at Chief Charlo on Thursday morning. His presentation ends with several launches of a water-powered rockets on school grounds, propelled by air pressure and rocketing 200 feet into the sky.
Frederick was invited by Jensen to Missoula, as the two are good friends who met through the church ministry.
"He and I have been talking about this for years," said Jensen. "It's to help kids get a vision of what they can do with their lives."
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In between slides and videos showing the various missiles he helped develop, and the technology and science used to make them, Frederick told of the lessons he learned in a life that started in the muggy fields of rural Alabama in the 1950s.
It was there that he and his brothers first started experimenting with making rockets, and befriending the African-American families next to them during a time of great segregation. Frederick was only 6, but those first field experiments presaged a life of science and rocketry, and those friendships yielded great compassion for and understanding of the plight of others.
Today, "I get paid good money to do something that I've been doing as a hobby since I was young," he said.
Everybody has the capability of becoming a rocket scientist or an engineer or anything else, but it's the people who pay close attention and notice details that others ignore that set them apart.
"If you see things that others don't see," he said, "you will stand out in your career."
But no matter how much science you learn, you will never be truly successful or happy unless you are compassionate, kind and lead a life of integrity, Frederick said. And science will never inform you how to do "the hardest job in the world" - being a parent.
"That's going to be the hardest thing you'll ever figure out," he said. "How to help a child grow up."
Largely for the same reasons, that's why Frederick calls teachers his heroes.
"You ought to come in here every day and say thank you, even though they give you a lot of work to do," he said.
To see the NBC story article go to the NBC website
Shared by Jake Jensen - Evangelist Missoula, Montana