Teen Cancer Patient Posts Touching Tale of Mark Hamill's Surprise Visit
Mark Hamill with Jamie Harkin (Facebook)
Mark Hamill has really taken his Jedi training to heart. The Star Wars star has helped raise over $2 million for UNICEF, lobbied for a terminally ill fan to see Force Awakens before it was released, and visited a children’s hospital in Los Angeles. And that’s all in the past six months.
The man eternally identified with his alter ego Luke Skywalker does it all quietly (occasionally just with a deep stare) until the press catches on. The tipster behind Hamill’s latest good deed, though, also happens to be the recipient.
Jamie Harkin, a 17-year-old Irish teen suffering from Hodgkins Lymphoma, recounted in a touching Facebook post the surprise visit he received from Hamill earlier this week. “I’m speechless,” Harkin wrote on his page, Jamie’s Journie, where he documents his battle with cancer and uses it to support other teens affected by the disease. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to write a status that will ever do justice to what just happened and how I’m feeling. Even now there’s a wealth of emotions running through me, I’m definitely still in shock, I’m absolutely elated, incredibly humbled, honoured and just completely overwhelmed.”
Harkin said that he had lobbied for “just about any other person who has ever had anything to do with Star Wars” to visit him while the cast and crew were in rural Ireland filming the upcoming Rian Johnson-directed sequel Episode VIII. He didn’t get just any cast- or crewmember, though.
“I finally met my idol today,” he wrote. “I had breakfast with Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamill himself. People say that you should never meet your idols, because you build them up in your head so much that when you do meet them, they are a let down, and to that, I say, ‘You’re wrong.’ Mark was everything I ever imagined him to be and then some.”
Harkin posted 30 photos from Hamill’s visit, which you can check out on his Facebook page. Give him a follow and some words of encouragement while you’re at it. Hamill may play a hero on the movie screen, but he plays one every day in real life.
Editor’s Note: This post incorrectly referred to Jamie as a “she”. We’ve updated the error.
