You only wish your Halloween costume included your very own Tie Fighter.
No tricks here – just treats. Marine Corps kid and Star Wars fan Cole Geraghty, 8, scored big time in the cool Halloween costume department thanks to a Navy friend, Michael Fernandez, who lives seven doors down in their Colorado Spring, Colorado neighborhood.
And now Cole's costume has gone viral.
Cole has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), which means he currently uses a motorized wheel chair when he wants to really get around. Last Halloween Fernandez told Cole’s parents, Stephanie and Brian, that they should think about making Cole’s chair into part of his costume, Stephanie Geraghty said.
When he offered to tackle the project himself this year, they couldn’t say “no,” she said.
“We said ‘that’s really awesome but please don’t feel pressured to do this,’” she said.
Fernandez started working right away, and the Geraghtys would catch glimpses of him tinkering on the project in his garage on evenings and weekends.
“We’re like ‘what is he doing?’” she said. “He had all these pipes and duct tape, and we had no idea what he was doing.
The months-long construction project included several fittings with Cole in his chair, Geraghty said, but it wasn't until close to the end that they knew what was being made.
“Every time Cole would go down for a fitting, Mike said ‘what do you think this is?’ Cold would say ‘I don’t know!’” she said.
The Tie Fighter is constructed with pipes, screws, duct tape, foam board and Velcro – exactly the same materials the Empire uses to produce the real deal, we figure.
Cole spent Halloween tearing around the neighborhood in the chair-turned-Tie Fighter, Geraghty said. The size made it impossible to approach most doors, but neighbors had no problem making a fighter-side candy delivery, she said.
Taking it on or off the chair takes about 15 minutes of moving panels and messing with screws. Cole gave the ship a beating during some risky Halloween, um, flying, but it’s still in pretty good shape. Now they are storing it in several large pieces in their garage, Geraghty said.
But now for the really important question: can you PCS with a Tie Fighter and, if so, will the movers take it upon themselves to play the part of the Rebel Alliance and destroy it?
Geraghty said they aren’t going to find out. When they PCS next year they plan to donate the rig to another kid so he can use it, too.
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