In 2008, Keaton was 3 years old and had a very simple request for Halloween: he wanted to be a pirate.
His dad, Ryan Weimer, didn’t just buy him a costume. He built a complete pirate ship around Keaton’s wheelchair. Keaton has spinal muscular atrophy. That night, the boy was no longer the one watching from the sidelines. Ryan summed it up this way: it was total inclusion. The wheelchair was no longer a barrier; it had been absorbed into the costume.
Three of the Weimers’ five children have the same condition, so Ryan kept building. The requests became more and more complex, eventually transforming a child and his chair into Toothless, the dragon from ‘How to Train Your Dragon’. He searched online for ideas, found the foam fabrication technique from the Stan Winston School of Character Arts, and the school partnered with the organization to provide mentors for its volunteers across the country. That’s how Magic Wheelchair, a nonprofit based in Oregon, was born.
In 2016, 8-year-old Daniel wrote to them. He has terminal cancer of the brain and spinal cord and had just lost the ability to walk. He told them how much he loves Star Wars. What he got was a reveal party and a wheelchair transformed into a custom-made TIE Fighter ship.
How many dreams have come true since that pirate ship?