by: Brent Woronoff
It took Palm Coast resident Keith DeDeo a year to craft his Mandalorian costume. When he wears it at fan events and charity functions, he becomes the Star Wars character.
“It’s not hard to act like the character once you’re dressed up,” he says. “People will come up to you. I pretty much keep quiet. The cool thing is with the costume on you’re pretty much the character.”
DeDeo, a welder and heavy equipment operator at St. Augustine Marine Center, fabricated the costume from PVC Sintra board during his spare time. He heated the plates, shaped them, sanded them, painted them and weathered them to look like Mandalorian armor.
My mom is a saint. She is still storing a bunch of my old toys in her attic and I still haven t taken them. When my family was there for Christmas my son wanted to check out some of my old Star Wars Stuff.
We crawled into the way back of the attic, which was more of an unheated adjacent hallway next to my old bedroom, and dug out a couple of boxes. One of them said Andy Star Wars and the other said Andy He-Man/Star Wars.
The most interesting piece that was unboxed was the Ewok Village. It was probably my favorite Star Wars thing to play with. I had a bunch of the Ewoks for it and Princess Leia and C-3P0 to go with it. The set is almost complete. The string that held the boulder is broken and so is a piece of the barbecue pit. Otherwise, I have all of the pieces, including the super awesome booby trap net.