How One Boy’s Wheelchair Halloween Costume Sparked a Beautiful Movement of Joy and Inclusion
What started as one special Halloween project turned into a movement spreading smiles nationwide
When he was little, Reese Davis just wanted to turn his wheelchair into a Wall-E costume for Halloween. What happened next sparked a decades-long movement that’s still rolling strong! Here, they share their story.
“The costume has to be wider to fit me and my chair,” Reese Davis told his dad, Lon, as they worked together on his Wall-E Halloween costume. Wall-E was Reese’s favorite movie character, a little guy on wheels — just like him. And this Halloween, Reese was going to transform his new wheelchair into the perfect costume.
Reese was barely three months old when he was diagnosed with spinal tumors that left him unable to walk. But at 3, he got his own pint-size wheelchair—just in time for preschool. He could roll everywhere with the other children, but he felt like an outsider. At recess, he couldn’t play, and during story time, when the other kids sat cross-legged on the rug, he rolled up in his chair, unsure how to join in. Reese’s classmates didn’t know how to approach him, so they kept their distance — until the day of the school Halloween parade.
“Wow! That’s the best costume ever!” the other kids exclaimed when Wall-E rolled through the door and circled the room. Everyone wanted to march alongside Reese as they paraded the Kansas City school hallways. “That was the funnest day ever!” he told his folks that night. And the next day?
“Sit here beside me!” his classmates cheered, vying for Reese’s attention. The Wall-E costume had broken the ice — now everyone wanted to be Reese’s friend.
The next Halloween, Reese and Lon built a Buzz Lightyear sitting in a big claw machine, and the next spring, they went to Kansas City Comic Con and the costume stole the show. Even the event organizers were impressed. “Next year, if we give you a free booth, will you do a showcase?”
“You bet!” Reese agreed, and he and his dad spent that summer designing and building more wheelchair-friendly costumes.
Photos posted to social media were liked and shared. I wish I knew how to do something like that for my child, many parents commented, which started Reese thinking.
“Dad, do you think we could also make costumes for other kids in wheelchairs so they can have a great Halloween like me?” the kindhearted kid asked.
“Let’s do it!” Lon encouraged.
An uplifting idea
Reese was over the moon as he and his dad set up their showcase at the next Comic Con. They also laid out costume applications and a donation box. One of the first visitors to their booth was an elderly man in a wheelchair. He gazed at the costumes, then dropped a $100 bill in their box. “I sure wish they had something like this when I was a kid,” he said wistfully.
That day, they raised $3,000 at Comic Con and another $3,000 through GoFundMe. Then they got to work on the waiting list they’d gathered.
Their first costume was for a little girl named Reagan. She’s so depressed, she doesn’t even want to dress up, her mom wrote. But when Lon showed her sketches on their new Walkin’ & Rollin’ Costumes website (WalkinRollin.org), she lit up. “I love the Cinderella carriage, but I also love peacocks,” she said. So Lon and Reese combined them, and that Halloween, Reagan was a beautiful Peacock Princess!
You can’t imagine the difference your costume made, her mom wrote in a thank-you note.
Spreading hope and happiness
Over the past decade, Lon and Reese have built a network of over 250 volunteers who have made hundreds of wheelchair-ready costumes, including fire engines and a Top Gun jet.
Meanwhile, back in Kansas City, every new costume gets a livestreamed “Squeals on Wheels” unveiling event—a fundraiser where parents share their child’s story before the curtain rises to reveal a child transformed into a favorite superhero, Disney princess or Star Wars character.
Now 19, Reese is away at college, studying mechanical engineering and hoping to work for Disney to help make its rides more accessible. Reese and his dad also plan to keep building costumes. “There’s a world of difference between people staring at you because you’re in a wheelchair,” Reese says, “and people staring because your costume is just so cool!”
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