Chris Woods of Chris' Twirlettes wanted to wear this coat and hear it's story after hearing of it from a mutual friend, Tina Lyle.
My name is Judy Hensley and I bought this coat at a local Big Lot around ten years ago to see how many other people thought it would be fun to put it on and have their picture made in it for me. I found out quite quickly that my own daughter despised the coat. She actually took it to youth camp the first year of it's existance. But she was determined to leave it there. I actually gave her permission to do so, but what she did not know was that I had found another one and already bought it home to have when she returned from camp.
She was quite appalled that I had done this to her. And I told her I was coming up with a way to use the coat for good. And I asked her to please let me take her picture wearing the pretty colored coat, and she resisted for several years, but I finally had lots of other people who were wearing the coat.
After several years people started wanting to know about this coat, and why people were letting me take their picture in it. And it wasn't just local people: there were people in Washington, California, Florida, and even England who were eager to have their picture in the coat. So the journey of the coat to several states and overseas a time or two began.
At that time, I had made several friends along the way who had something in common with me. They had Parkinson's Disease. So many of my friends with PD helped me boost my volume of pictures with anyone wearing this coat.
There have only been a handful of people who would not wear the coat. And I began to add into the story of the coat , the story of what it feels like to have Parkinson's Disease. I was even so bold to ask a friend who is a great advocate for PD and ALZ (Alzheimer's Disease) if she would take the coat with her to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, and she said she would!
Some have said I should charge people to wear it, but there are so many who have not paid to wear it, but they graciously gave me a minute of their time to list to the story of the Coat! Some even started callin it 'Da Coat! Now, I currently have a bunch of pictures with people in 'Da Coatt that are hardc opiesw, and some electronic copies. Best I can estimate, I have close to 500 people who have worn 'Da Coat.
