Magic Wheelchair: How One Father’s Determination Made His Kids’ Halloween Wish Come True
“What do you want to be for Halloween?”
It’s a question being asked this time of year in households across the country. And what typically follows is a trip to Party City, Target or Walmart, resulting in a lot of happy Elsas, Annas, Captain Americas and Darth Vaders.
Oregon father Ryan Weimer had a similar conversation with his son, Keaton, back in 2008. And Keaton knew exactly what he wanted to be: a pirate. The fact that Keaton is wheelchair-bound — he was diagnosed as a baby with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a form of muscular dystrophy — was not going to stop Weimer from making his son’s Halloween wish come true.
Of course, it wouldn’t be as simple as a trip to Party City. But he knew it could be done.
“I had one of those moments when my brain decides it’s the best time for thinking — this usually seems to happen way too early in the morning when I should be sleeping or in the shower,” Weimer explains. “But during this magical thinking moment I realized, ‘Keaton has this wheelchair he cruises around in, and every pirate needs a ship, so let’s just build one around his chair!’”
Weimer didn’t know how he would do it. He just knew it could be done. Somehow.
Using a lot of heart, some dogged determination and a bit of design savvy, Weimer drew up plans for an “epic” pirate ship on wheels. And although he had to start over a few times, Weimer ended up with one happy pirate that Halloween of 2008.
Weimer recalls, “Keaton loved it! What kid wouldn’t love having a pirate ship to roll deep in, sailing through the streets, collecting Halloween booty?”
Besides building his child a great costume — surely the envy of many a wannabe-pirate — Weimer had another important goal in mind: to make Keaton feel “normal,” even if it was just for one day out of the year.
“The best thing about [the costume] was that the other kids weren’t looking at Keaton like he was a poor kid in a wheelchair,” he said. “They were looking at him like he was an awesome pirate in a pirate ship. It allowed them to approach him and it had a really great impact on our community.”
It also allowed Wiemer and his wife, Lana, to educate their neighbors about spinal muscular atrophy and muscular dystrophy. The Weimers’ second son, Bryce, also has SMA. Like Keaton, Bryce is wheelchair bound. Their youngest son, Thatcher, does not have SMA.
The bar was set high in 2008, and Weimer spent the next several Halloweens building bigger, badder costumes for Keaton and, eventually, Bryce.
Last year, Keaton had his most epic idea yet: he wanted to be Hiccup from the How to Train Your Dragon movies. And since you can’t have hiccup without his constant dragon companion, Ryan needed to build Toothless.
“Each year our ability to make cooler, more epic projects improves, but there is a limit to what we can do with just our resources,” Weimer explained. This year, the Weimers launched a Kickstarter campaign to help cover the costs of Keaton’s dream costume.
After they smashed through their Kickstarter goals, an idea took shape: to use the extra funds to outfit more wheelchair-bound kids with epic Halloween costumes.
Thus, Magic Wheelchair was born…
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