Legion History: 1998-1999

The year was 1996. Lucasfilm announced it was re-releasing the original Star Wars trilogy, completely digitally remastered with new footage and ready for the silver screen again after 20 years. While it made no commercial sense to show a 20-year old movie in an age when special effects were lightyears better, the return of the Star Wars trilogy had bigger implications than a lot of people expected: it was a chunk of pop culture that had incubated in the minds of children who were now income-earning adults. Star Wars fandom was re-awakening after twenty years of slumber. And seeing the movies on the big screen, which was a cultural rite of passage denied to anyone born after 1983, this was more than just a second go-round.

It was at this time that I was recovering from a horrible car accident which cost me my left leg. A whole year in a wheelchair and twenty operations later, I had lost some of the steam in my life. When I finally did return to work, my buddy and co-worker, Tom Crews, and I hit on the subject of Star Wars one day. Among our rememberings we thought of the stormtroopers from those movies. Ultimately cool, we thought - the stormtroopers were the original space commandoes, bad asses in gleaming white armor, soulless black eyes, and snarling grimaces on their faces. So after a while we wondered: how would one possibly obtain armor like that? Does it even exist? Could someone make it?

So Tom went to the internet (still in its infancy in the late 90's) and actually found an obscure reference to some stormtrooper armor in a usenet group. I was intrigued. I called the number, which connected me to some place in Moraga, California named DogStar Collectibles. I forget the guy's name, but he said he actually represented a guy named Mike Chewpitch out in Chicago who made the armor himself and he promised it looked authentic. Well, maybe my gut instinct served me well or maybe I was just a sucker. I plunked down a LOT of money and ordered a set. In two weeks the stuff arrived. With a lot of trouble, I managed to get it all together and whaddya know? Suddenly there was a stormtrooper walking around in the real world.

When the special edition re-releases finally arrived, I knew this was my chance to make a splash with my new toy. I remember marching into the shabby little movie theater where they were showing it. I was nervous as hell - you couldn't see anything in that helmet, and it was so uncomfortable. Would this thing even look real? Am I making an idiot out of myself? You would have thought Godzilla walked into the lobby from the reaction I got. Screams went up from the crowd as they freaked out over an actual stormtrooper stalking the room. Kids came up and began poking me, fan-boys fawned over me, and inevitably a drunk a@@hole would try to show off in front of his girlfriend by taunting me.

Weeks passed and as the Return of the Jedi arrived, Tom had his own set of armor and joined me. The instant we stepped out together the difference was obvious. Same screams, same adoration. Only this time, people kept their distance. If we posted near a doorway, people walked by respectfully and waved. Stark contrast to the poking treatment I'd gotten before. No longer did they see me as a museum exhibit on display - we had the appearance of a unit of troopers placed there to guard something.

Something clicked in my head just then. If two troopers were seen like the real thing, how much cooler would it be to have five troopers around? Or ten? In fact, would there be any diminishing returns on more troopers, or would it just keep looking better the more we had?

Back to the internet now. This time I started a web page on geocities just to post the pictures of me and Tom. That's what geeks do, after all - show off our geek toys to other geeks on the internet. After a couple of events I thought it would be funny to narrate the pictures as if they were a field report of two stormtroopers on patrol. Borrowing from the movies, I gave myself a TK number and just used my birthday. Same for Tom. "Here we see TK210 and TK512 managing a crowd in their sector. No sign of rebel scum, over." It read like a news reel from WWII and was corny, but it told a story. Before long, I even gave the site a name to add atmosphere. I called it Detention Block 2551, as if ol' TK210 and TK512 were stationed there and just reporting their tours of duty.

After a few weeks of having the site up, I started getting emails from other people with stormtrooper armor. One guy was in Canada, who shot me a picture of himself in armor standing in front of a lake at sunset. He gleefully typed "TK814 enjoys shoreleave on the pleasure planet such-and-such". I thought that was funny and posted it, quoting him and acknowledging a third member to the cast. With that, other pictures came in with requests to post them on the roster, too. So I did, and before long we had probably a squad-sized group with handsome pictures and ID numbers.

Well, a good idea sometimes just presents itself. I thought, why not just give the group a name, make up a back-story, maybe even add a hook to tie it in with the actual movies? My father had served in WWII in the Army Air Corps, so growing up I remember looking through his old flight school graduation book. There were all these rows of pictures, young men with flight goggles on, cocky grins, and a gleem in their eye. Now that was a spectacle. I wondered if we could achieve something like that on my site, even if just for fun. We weren't pilots, so we couldn't be a squadron (which would have sounded so cool, but alas). But we were infantry technically and a small unit, so we could be a squad. The Empire is supposed to be big, so the name would probably be a generic number to start with. But I wanted a number that would sound cool and would lend itself well to an alliterative motto. I wanted something that would go well with 'The Fighting (whatever)'. So that left the four hundreds or five hundreds. I went with five hundred and even added a 'one' to the end to make it sound a little more authentic. Put together, the 'one' made it sound even more alliterative: the Fighting Five-Oh-First. Now that was a good military unit name if I ever heard one!

So the 501st Squad was born and I wasted no time coming up with a backstory. After all, the more detail the more excitement this would generate and people would feel some pride in being a part of the website. I got to thinking and realized something odd about the Star Wars trilogy. It seemed odd to me that everywhere Vader went, it seemed like he always had a couple of stormtroopers just hanging around ready for him to bark orders at them. They weren't exactly doing anything, they were just there. Like in the end of A New Hope. The deathstar is under attack and Vader turns and yells at two TIE pilots to follow him. Hello. Why were't they already in the hangar, ready to take off for the battle? They were already dressed! It made me wonder if Vader had some kind of hand-picked unit that he borrowed specialty troops from. And that's when the idea hit me he might have his own select guard that was at his beck and call. That would be cool, being Darth Vader's hand-selected stormtrooper! Who wouldn't like to be that? And why not another motto for the squad while we're at it? Nothing's more powerful than that image of Vader extending his clenched mitt at Luke in Cloud City - why not Vader's Fist?

Okay, at this point I was feeling inspired. I ran with the idea and updated the site, complete with a unit name, two mottos, and a really cool backstory that read like this...

Stormtroopers: deadly shock troops of the Emperor. Heartless, fearless, tenacious soldiers of unwavering loyalty who crush the enemies of the Galactic Empire. This archive commemorates the greatest of all Stormtrooper units: the legendary Fighting 501st Squad, known as 'Vader's Hand'. Commissioned after the fall of the Old Republic, the 501st distinguished itself in hunting down and destroying scores of Rebel cells and outposts. Their accomplishments won the attention of the Emperor's right-hand man, Lord Vader, who made them his personal guard. Whenever Vader's aims fall outside the realm of the Imperial bureaucracy, he calls upon the 501st to accomplish his bidding. The only corss-disciplinary squad in the Emipire, it is composed of every kind of trooper, pilot, scout, or driver. Whatever agenda Lord Vader pursues, he is assured of the specialized manpower to accomplish it. The 501st is ready to be deployed to his side at a moment's notice. This resource is a testimony to Vader's power and often baffles the generals who wonder how he manages to wage campaigns with little or no involvement in the normal ranks.

Click on the buttons to see what the site looked like in the beginning...

I wanted to really sell the bad-ass reputation of the unit and while simultaneously explaining the unique qualities of the group: elite squad, quickly deployed, Vader's boys, contains all the types of troopers you'd expect in the movies. Little did I know that would allow me to be flexible in the coming years as every kind of Imperial imaginable would sign up to join. One member offered the change to Vader's Fist (since there was already an Emperor's Hand). Good idea, we went with that. Scott MacArthur (our friend on the pleasure planet) designed a rudimentary logo for the squad. We were off and running!

So we were off and running and it didn't take long for fans to hear about us and join up. In 1998 we had 61 members. In 1999 we had 147. And our membership was scattered all over the world. Clusters formed around major cities, and the clusters were beginning to develop their own identities. Pretty soon I had to come up with a means of organizing the rabble, or else it would fragment. After all, why be a part of a club a thousand miles away when the only members you see are your fellow troopers at local events. I started by breaking the U.S. up into West, Central, and East regions to begin with. But this was mostly to get a handle on the membership lists. It occurred to me that to keep all tribute coming back to Rome, it was important to nurture the idea of local entities while stressing the importance of uniting them all under one banner. My theory was members would want to feel they were contributing to their local community as well as to something larger. It wouldn't take long for a group hundreds of miles away to hit on the idea of forming their own unit, then the whole thing would crumble and the benefit of one large body would be lost and hard to recover. At least this way people could express their individuality and still retain the identity of the 501st. In fact, an early aim of mine was to really sell the brand of 501st, get the name and the motto and the logo out there for everyone to see. I was worried before long we'd have the 502nd, 503rd, and so on. And how would anyone organize that?

I remember worrying a good bit about the organizational structure of the club. I even consulted my friend and fellow trooper, Alan Isom, who was in the military. My thinking was, we needed positions in the club so people could perform the work necessary, but I didn't want to start a pecking order with grandiose titles for fear of egos getting out of control and discouraging new members. I also tried to avoid ranks like those in the military, for fear of appearing disrespectful of titles that were earned in the real world. The same concern was there about the unit names. I didn't want to use terms like platoon or company or regiment. We had no idea how big we were going to get, so those names would constantly hinder us. And, again, I didn't want to use terms that made us seem paramilitary. And calling ourselves a Squad was quickly making no sense as we were far larger than any concept of a squad.

Eventually I figured it would be safe to use some archaic terms from the Roman Legion. Our squad would now be something much larger, with a term to reflect that. The term 'Legion' not only had no ties to real-world units, but had an old-world ring to it. And it didn't hurt that the term was even used in Return of the Jedi when referring to the stormtroopers on Endor! As for the regional units, the joke at the time was that we were stormtroopers occupying the planet Earth, so an occupational unit in Roman times that had a good ring to it was Garrisons. Still no ties to the military, and the name worked well. I immediately set out to carve up the U.S. into six Garrisons: North-West, South-West, Mid-West, Central, Southern, and Northeast. Over time, these were in turn carved up into smaller Garrisons to fit the needs of the regions. Smaller areas still within the Garrisons sometimes form their own identities, for which we revived the term 'Squads' and placed them under the Garrisons. And in parts of the world where only a few members lived but couldn't justify being called Garrisons, we created Outposts. Finally, as more and more categories of costumes appeared, it seemed like a good idea to create theme-based units organized around each category of costume. In other words, a unit just for our TIE pilots, a unit just for our Biker Scouts, etc. I thought of a unit that's put together for a specialized job and figured a name like Detachment sounded appropriate. Score one for movie references again, since it turns out Vader refers to a Detachment going down to Tattooine.

For a complete roster of the stormtroopers of the 501st squad in 1998 and 1999, click on the links to the left.

Dragoncon 1998
Dragoncon was the first ever meeting of the 501st Squad in person. That was not a fun time - here we were a bunch of costumers meeting up for the first time and I'm hawking this concept of a club. No one was buying it. Some of them even made fun of it. I couldn't GIVE away membership back then. Even Anthony Daniels thought we were idiots, judging by the way he looked at us. But we persevered through it all and now we're here today. Three cheers for perseverance and complete lack of shame.

Meeting of the Fetts. I was interested to see how my home-made Fett would stack up against Fetts bought over the internet. Mine's the one second from the right. Not too bad - I was very proud of my creation. Mike Glover, far left, made his own Jodo Kast armor, and now makes Clone Trooper armor, making him one of the oldest 501st members around.
Our first group shot. That's (l to r) Mike Van Zweiten, Alan Isom, me (shorty), Jeff Allen, Berni (?), Rob Allen, and two unidentified troopers. Notice the 501st Squad logo I marked every one of my photos with. I want to say the first unidentified trooper is wearing Armor F/X armor. Not sure about the far right guy. Interesting helmet. Alan and I are wearing stuff made by Mike Chewpitch of Dogstar Collectibles. I'm not sure if they're even around anymore. Our armor is styrene, while the Armor F/X stuff is ABS.
The finest moment of the weekend was the Star Wars costume contest. A bunch of us just showed up and when they started asking for contestants to walk in the troopers (who didn't know each other) started talking about going in together. I grabbed a cutie in a Princess Leia costume and asked her if she wanted to recreate the Tantive scene from A New Hope. She agreed and when we walked in as a squad the crowd went nuts. Right there we recaptured the intensity of that well-known scene and demonstrated how effective several stormtroopers could be in a presentation. It really encouraged me to work harder on the 501st concept. And I got to know the cutie (Cheralyn Lambeth) as a very good friend!

That's Shannon Wendlick and Derek Smith as X-Wing pilots. I'm not sure who the guy on the far left is. Shannon liked to goof on our name 'Fighting 501st' and gave me hell about it. Derek ended up one of our members, and they're both friends I see once a year at DCon even today.
These are the only shots I have of the Masquerade that year, MC'd by Anthony Daniels whom we escorted onstage at the beginning of the show. Back then everyone was overwhelmed by the site of stormtroopers on the stage. Nowadays we server as sweepers for the Masquerade.
Dragoncon's Star Wars costume contest was our first chance to put on a little show. We escorted Princess Leia into the room, recreating the Tantive IV scene from A New Hope. Leia was none other than Cheralyn Lambeth, who went on to become a pillar of the 501st and serves as its archivist now. She's also god-mother to one of my daughters! Funny how life works.

Soon after Tom and I got our armor, Peter Mayhew was scheduled to appear at a convention in podunk Columbia, SC (and how I don't know - there's never been a con here since). Well, the nice comic shop guy in town had his limo stop off at his shop (without telling Peter). Needless to say, Peter was pretty put-out after a long plane trip to find he had an improvised gig at a comic shop. But Tom and I showed up, entertained the fans waiting, and tried to give Peter some support. To his credit, the man was warm and friendly to every fan he met. Quite the gentleman (even if he threatened to crush me and Tom!). :)

In 1999 we asked Dave Prowse, who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, to act as the 501st Squad's Honorary Leader. He accepted happily and, at Dragoncon 1999, shows me his appreciation...

Other pictures from Dragoncon 1999 and the second ever appearance by the 501st. Still growing...

One of our California troopers even made it in the 1999 program for Comicon!

In 1999 Lucasfilm held the first ever all-Star Wars, fully-endorsed convention in Colorado. They called it Celebration and held it at an air museum. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but several Legion members were there and they made a big splash. One picture actually made it into Entertainment Weekly magazine, our first such appearance in a major magazine. Seen standing next to the boy are actually Swiss Garrison members Pascal Biondi and Marc Baier. I can't remember who's in the picture holding up the 501st sign, but that's the actual sign I printed up and dragged to Dragoncon in 1998. I shipped it out there so we'd be properly represented. So like planting a flag in a new country, our boys and girls claimed their ground in the first ever Celebration!

Allie, Laura, Court, and myself at the premiere of Episode I: The Phantom Menace. That's the Fett suit I made myself! Probably wouldn't hold up today, but pretty good for 1999.