The Squad’s mission was to make an appearance before the show to mingle with the crowd. Right after the intermission, the ASO held a short costume contest of which R2-D2 tried to sneak into dressed as a ghost.  After beeping and tweeting with the conductor, they played the main Star Wars Theme for R2, at which time some Rebel Legion Members took the stage alongside R2. Right after the main theme, the director looked a bit nervous, and about that time, the Imperial March started playing.  At that time, Darth Vader came through the auditorium and marched on stage being accompanied by some trooper escorts.

As Vader made his way on stage, R2 screamed and immediately exited stage right. Vader had a brief conversation with the conductor Phillip Mann, well, Vader stared menacingly at Mann while being asked questions. Finally Mann was so nervous, he apologized to Lord Vader for being dressed as a Jedi and immediately had the orchestra start playing the Imperial March again so that Vader could leave in an appropriate manner.

The crowd went wild over the squad’s appearance with many pictures taken throughout the night. After the symphony was over for the evening, the squad visited with the new conductor backstage along with some of the orchestra members. Everyone had a good time taking pictures, and the squad was begged to return to help out the orchestra in early 2011 for a John Williams night.

While our participation was small in numbers, we more than made up for it in heart. Our squad was represented by Chris Campbell and his astromech unit, Mark Bridges as a Sand Trooper, Chad Lawrence as a Shadow Scout, and our Squad Leader Tracy Wilson acting as ambassador handing out hundreds of flyers and other propaganda. A family or Rebel Jedi was also in attendance, but they “didn’t need to show me their identification.”

Our squad was able to meet the heads of Autism Speaks as well as many members of the Arkansas media, including Mike Francis of KARK, who is a Star Wars fan himself. Along with our appearance, we were able to donate $100 to Autism Speaks on behalf of the 501st Legion.

We made good first impressions and had our photos taken with hundreds of fans, young and old alike. Memories were made and the Legion stood strong!

Event Photos:

Chris Campbell’s Flickr Photos

This event turned out great at both locations with everyone having a lot of fun. While there were a few young children and even some older ladies that got a bit scared by our presence, the largest majority of folks seemed to be very happy with us being there.

At the Little Rock event, we drew quite the crowd even basically blocking off the entire walk way a few times in front of the store from the number of people there to find out what was going on and taking pictures. The store employees thanked us throughout the day and were extremely nice. They really seemed to get a kick out of having Star Wars characters there.

This was also the first major public event for Arkansas’s first R2-D2. Even though he didn’t have feet coverings yet, no one seemed to mind and were enthralled by him.

Thanks to Darth Vader’s elite 501st troopers, the Jonesboro Mall at Turtle Creek Build A Bear 2010 event was a success! With the help of Sarah and the rest of the Build A Bear staff dozens of kids to adults stopped in to check out the new limited edition Star Wars bear. Troops in attendance on September 25th were Christopher Clark (TB-4298), Mark Bridges (TK), Henry (TK) and Alex Crites (spotter).

The reaction from people shopping though was mall was very positive. There were lots of hugs, high-fives, pictures, and of course sales of the new line of Star Wars Build-A-Bears. Princess Leia bear costume sold out right away and one of the Build-A-Bear employees was delighted to show everyone how the tags on the Han Solo costume actually say “Hans.

Thanks to all the Arkansas troopers that were able to attend these events!!!

Event Photos::
Jonesboro – Chris Clark’s Facebook Album

Little Rock – Chris Campbell’s Flickr Album

I’m currently still getting everything setup on the site, so there will be lots of broken links and odd looking pages for a bit.

The site is getting a complete make over and hopefully will have a lot of new features come online within the next couple of weeks. Due to the ammount of events we have in the next two weeks, it might take a bit, but hopefully things will look good and work very very soon.

If you have any problems, concerns, or suggestions about the site, please let us know in the forums or contact uubergeek directly. The new system has updatability for news, front page, forums, and many other things that the old site didn’t have.  Hopefully the formating issues with the new forum will be solved soon, and it will match up with the rest of the site just fine.

Again, there is a lot of standard test data in the new database setup, so as we get new functions online, some of the odd looking stuff will be disappearing. The old site was very bland and non functional from an updating point of view, so we went ahead and pushed the new one live to hopefully let people see a much better looking site!

February

:: Friday Feb 18 – Sunday Feb 20
ConNooga – Chattanooga, TN

Arkansas Crimson Nova Squad

• Part of the Star Garrison of the 501st Legion

Our new site is home to the updated calendar, gallery, and forum setup and will be able to be updated regularly now to have a central place for squad members and the public to go for information.