RIDGEFIELD – Logan Hale of Ridgefield, 13, dreamed that every child in the hospital would have unlimited access to interactive video games. With the help of Carolina Panthers chasing Christian Jackson McCaffrey, his dream comes true.
Last month, the first nine game systems were delivered to Levine Children’s Hospital in North Carolina through The Logan Project and the Christian McCaffrey Foundation, along with several other organizations. The foundation hopes to be able to distribute game systems to children in treatment in all hospitals in the United States.
The idea
When Logan was diagnosed in 2020, one of his mom’s friends bought him a portable video game station to use in the hospital.
Playing live video games helped Logan stay in touch with his friends back home, said his mother, Kristina Hale.
“So for him…it eased the pain a bit because he could communicate directly with all his friends from school, his friends from sports and stuff,” she said.
However, while Logan was playing, he didn’t see another kid in the hospital with a play system.
“He became aware that he was one of the only ones in the hospital who had access to an Xbox,” Hale said, adding that Logan always had roommates during his hospital stay.
“At one point he said, ‘Mom, wouldn’t it be great if we could set up some sort of fund to pay for Xboxes for kids hospitalized with long-term illnesses?'”
Logan’s hospitals could provide a Wii console, Kristina Hale said it’s not the same as an interactive system.
“With Wiis, you can’t communicate with friends unless you’re typing, and most kids, when they’re sick, get so much meds that they can’t type,” she said. “So Xbox Live is the best because you just wear a headset and you talk to everyone and you laugh and you play the game together.”
After one hospitalization, Logan asked his brother Ethan, now 19, for advice on how to get the project started.
“I actually found a list he made — that his first priority was to save his money. And the second was to call Microsoft,” Kristina Hale said. “He was under the impression that he would just give away those portable Xboxes.”
McCaffrey and the Panthers
Logan was a huge Carolina Panthers fan, his mother said. During Logan’s final days in intensive care, Christian McCaffrey learned about Logan and his struggles through a friend of Kristina’s who is affiliated with the NFL.
McCaffrey sent Logan video messages, “to tell him to keep hitting, to fight like hell — to encourage him to continue fighting the disease,” Kristina Hale said. “He was trying to encourage Logan to continue fighting because he was in ICU in a very serious condition.”
Logan died on December 30, 2021, four days after his 13th birthday. He was in eighth grade at East Ridge Middle School.
In a video on the Christian McCaffrey Foundation website, McCaffrey said that when he found Logan buried in his sweater, “it hit me like a brick.”
He said he wanted to honor Logan and created The Logan Project, which raises money for specialized game consoles for children’s hospitals across the country, while connecting children with athletes they admire, according to Christian McCaffrey’s website.
Logan’s father, David Hale, said that once the McCaffrey Foundation intervened, the project could move forward.
“Because they already had an existing platform, they were able to immediately make arrangements with (a company called) Gamers Outreach, which provides game stations on wheels that can be moved around,” he said.
David Hale said on those stations that kids can play “Xbox, they can play PlayStation, they can basically do everything they could do with their own units, but these units are contributed to the hospitals with the children’s wards so they can distribute them evenly.” distribute them among the children who want to use them.”
Children using the system have access to every game available to play.
“So it’s not just the actual machine,” said David Hale. “Neither children nor the hospital need to buy their own games. Everything is already installed. When a new game comes out, it is automatically downloaded in all the stations. They come with the controls, they come with the headsets, so that the children can simply log in to their own account and use everything on the hard drive and play with the children they know at home.’
Each portable Xbox console costs $3,500.
McCaffrey and the Panthers wanted to start the rollout of the project in their home state of North Carolina, where they play. Within the first three weeks, the project raised the $35,000 needed for the first nine systems.
Additional donations are being sought for the project.
Kristina Hale said Logan would be overjoyed if he knew his wish would come true. “It just seemed like it was written in the stars for this to happen.”
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