Star Wars superfans celebrate May 4th with ritual movie marathons, blue milk, costumes and community

On the holiest of nerd holidays, Kevin Doyle of Robbinsdale dusted off his handmade Mandalorian costume Saturday and chose a charitable benefit to attend for Star Wars Day.

The forums of the 501st Legion's Minnesota Garrison, the local division of the international stormtrooper society, were awash in talk of which elite cosplayers were trooping which events, including walks for the Animal Humane Society and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Doyle and his wife, Darcy Berus, who plays the Armorer, headed to the Ronald McDonald fundraiser at Nine Mile Brewing in Bloomington. They helped each other dress — combining intricate layers of snaps, buckles and magnets — then posed for hours of studio photos with fans. All the proceeds from the photos, a silent auction and commemorative sticker went to the Ronald McDonald House, which houses families with children in the hospital.

"What's really cool are the kids, and how excited they get to come up and take their picture with you," said Berus.

As Berus dressed in the brewery's parking lot, a little girl hopped up shouting, "May the Force be with you!"

"Exhibit A," said Berus, grinning.

Doyle's love of Star Wars stretches back to 1977, when the first episode to be released, "A New Hope," hit movie theaters. It played nonstop at the St. Louis Park Theatre for a year and he saw it as often as he could, awed by its galactic scale and imaginative costumes — as were millions of others around the world.

When cosplaying became more widely accepted, Doyle translated his skills as an artist into creating studio-quality stormtrooper armor, which he'd make for other members of the 501st Legion. Despite their love of villains, the group emphasizes doing good in the community.

Nearly a decade ago, after Doyle's wife, Eileen, died, he trekked hundreds of miles down the scorching California coast from Petaluma to San Diego in full stormtrooper gear to raise awareness for pancreatic cancer. The journey helped him process her loss.

Now Doyle spends his summers making appearances for Children's Hospital, Make-a-Wish and other causes. Star Wars Day marks the start of the season — May the Fourth, as in the Jedi adage "May the Force be with you."

Doyle says he does it for the kids' — and their parents' — reactions.

"You can't walk 10 feet without people mobbing you," Doyle said. "It's a nice way to bridge a gap, to close a distance between you and another person. You invite people to come up to you, and it's not a threatening thing at all, even for the kids."

After work on Saturday, Erin McGowan of Otsego tipped back a glass of milk dyed teal and launched into the three-hour process of transforming herself into her favorite character, Ahsoka Tano from "The Clone Wars," for Boom Island Brewing's annual costume contest. Ahsoka's story of a little girl who punched up helped her overcome a period of health-related unemployment, McGowan said.

McGowan, a Zoomer, co-hosts the Star Wars Generations podcast along with Star Tribune photographer Alex Kormann (a Millennial) and Matthew Fox (a Gen X'er). The premise of the show is intergenerational debate over all things Star Wars, from the role of trauma in spurring character growth to whether Hayden Christensen or the script was more to blame for Anakin Skywalker's flatness in "Attack of the Clones."

Love for Star Wars has transcended generations, McGowan says, because it's an eternally relatable story of endurance.

"Star Wars is a story of hope. It seems like a vague statement, but if you really think about it, it's a very powerful and very constant theme," McGowan said. "Simple hope can help people to achieve a lot. I've always loved representations in media of just the power of something like that."