2023 grads: ATEMS' Lucas aims for space while driving old-school cars
Editor's note; Abilene and Wylie school district commencements are this weekend. Featured Wednesday was Mansi Bhakta of Cooper. Today is Duncan Lucas, of ATEMS. Coming Friday is Wylie, and Saturday, the series concludes with Abilene High.
Duncan Lucas is both old school and reaching for the stars.
He drives a '68 Chevrolet and has been fixing vintage automobiles for about eight years. Yet, he will be getting his pilot's license this summer and has aspirations to be an astronaut.
Lucas graduates Saturday morning with 67 other seniors in the ATEMS (Academy of Technology, Engineering, Math and Science) Class of 2023. He is the sixth-ranked student in his class and was corps commander of the Junior ROTC program at Cooper High as a senior.
Using a scholarship, he will get his pilot's license this summer, taking instruction in Arizona. That, he believes, will fuel his next plan to be commissioned into the Air Force as an officer.
"And hopefully trained to become a pilot," he said. It doesn't matter why he flies.
"As long as I get to fly, that's all I really care about. Everyone wants to fly jets, and that's pretty cool. But I feel like I'm the type who would fly cargo," he said.
How many times did he see "Top Gun: Maverick,"
Lucas smiled,
"Three," he said.
Whatever he would fly, it would fit his patriotism.
"There is no country that is better, nothing like it anywhere else in the world," Lucas said. "So, yes, that's a large part of it."
More: 2023 grads: Cooper's well-traveled Bhakta finds new home in Abilene
Grandfather's influence
Lucas came to Abilene from Cuero, a South Texas city closest to Victoria. His father worked for Cintas, the uniform company, and a transfer brought his family to the Abilene area when Lucas was 7. He first attended school in the Clyde CISD through fourth grade, then went the Austin-Madison-ATEMS route in the Abilene ISD.
He has an older brother and "way older" stepbrothers and stepsisters.
"I've always been interested in engineering," he said of why he chose ATEMS, which now meets at the LIFT. He split his four years at the new site and the former site in a converted hospital. Robotics and other programs there interested him.
"It was like, 'Oh, I want to be part of that,'" he said. The smaller school population was appealing to a student who had that experience in education.
"You get a better one-on-one with teachers," he said, adding he feels prepared for college.
That will be back south at Texas A&M, where he plans to study aerospace engineering.
His early interest in history allowed him to study the nation's space program.
"I thought, 'Wow, that could be pretty cool'" to do in life, he said. "Aerospace, that's the way to go."
What's this about cars?
Ask him about his car, LIFT Director Jay Ashby said.
So ...
Lucas laughed at his campus notoriety.
It goes back to his grandfather, Quinon Lucas, who lives in Cuero.
"My grandpa has pretty much been my dad," he said. Lucas lives here with his mother.
"I worked with him on all sorts of things. Anything mechanical ... refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, cars, lawn mowers, weedeaters. All that kind of stuff," he said. "Tractors."
Lucas hopes his grandfather can come to graduation with his father.
It was Quinon Lucas, who'll be 91 this year, who got his grandson interested in antique cars. Not Model-Ts and such but the interestingly designed cars of the '50s and and '60s. To someone who'll turn 19 in October, those are antiques.
His grandfather had buddies who had older cars.
At 15, Lucas took the money he had saved working for his grandfather and his friends and purchased a 1958 Plymouth Plaza with only 46,000 miles on it. It was owned by a man in Anson who drove for a while, then parked it.
He still has it but drove it regularly for three years. It gets a whopping 10 miles to the gallon.
But it turns heads. His age group, raised with cars made out of a lot of plastic, thought "It was fantastic," he said.
He entered a few car shows.
He won't be motoring the Plymouth to College Station.
"I have another one," he said.
The summer of 2020, with leftover money, he bought another classic car.
"I know how to fix them, and I can resell them," he said. "And get more money."
He purchased a 1946 Dodge with 70,000-something miles.
The long brown sedan contrasts greatly in style with the car made 12 years later.
That's not going to A&M, either.
"I sold that one. I doubled my money," Lucas said. "That allowed me to buy another one."
Next was a 1955 Cadillac, which he sold, and then a 1964 Chrysler, which he said he's trying to part with.
"That one has been kind of tough," he said. It's fine to drive in the city, he said, but he's passed constantly on the highway. It has only a two-speed transmission and a six-cylinder engine.
He drove it 300 miles to see his grandfather, and that was an adventure, he said.
His latest purchase is a 1968 Chevy, which had sat for 38 years in Sweetwater. It was owned by the chief of police there. He parked it in a barn in 1984.
"The paint's rough," he said. But it runs well and has only 42,000 miles.
That's taking him to Aggieland.
A student of two worlds
Lucas realizes his interests vary, at least in a technological sense. Six-cylinder engines to those that can power a rocket into space.
"It's funny. I like preserving history but I also like looking into the future," he said.
For his final engineering project at ATEMS, Lucas and his partner developed a hydrogen engine.
"We did make it work," he said. They combined gallium - a rare earth metal "that doesn't go away and you can use it after every reaction," Lucas said - and aluminum, then added water to create a gas. They operated a weedeater for a few minutes.
"It produces no harmful pollution and it comes from renewable resources," he said. "It's very cool, I think."
The road, or sky, ahead
"My end goal is to be an astronaut," Lucas said. "That is my lifelong dream. I know you hear a lot of people say, 'I want to be an astronaut.' But I'm really trying to get to it."
He has met Apollo 13 astronauts Fred Haise, the lunar module pilot, and commander Jim Lovell. Flight commander Gene Kranz was at an event that Lucas attended.
"That was amazing," he said.
A trip to Cape Canaveral in Florida is on Lucas's bucket list.
He has taken aviation classes next door at Texas State Technical College and is getting his private license this summer.
"And I'll be in the Air Force, hopefully as a pilot. All that experience under my belt, and taking aerospace engineering and going to an engineering high school like this ... I think, one day, I have a good shot," he said.
Commencement info
FRIDAY
7 p.m. - Premier High School, Paramount Theatre; Wylie High School, Taylor County Coliseum
8 p.m. - Cooper High School, Shotwell Stadium (gates open at 7 p.m.)
SATURDAY
8:30 a.m. - ATEMS, Shotwell Stadium (gates open at 7:30 a.m.)
8 p.m. - Abilene, Shotwell Stadium (gates open at 7 p.m.)
Commencement schedule
FRIDAY
7 p.m. - Premier High School, Paramount Theatre; Wylie High School, Taylor County Coliseum
8 p.m. - Cooper High School, Shotwell Stadium
SATURDAY
8:30 a.m. - ATEMS, Shotwell Stadium
8 p.m. - Abilene, Shotwell Stadium
This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: 2023 grads: ATEMS' Lucas aims for space while driving old-school cars
