C-3PO restored by UD student

Grad student Mary Coughlin puts the gleam back in C-3PO’s burnish.

3:53 p.m., May 16, 2005--While fans line up for the May 19 premiere of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, one C-3PO is in the shop.

The incessantly chatty robot star of 1983’s The Return of the Jedi is getting first aid from Mary Coughlin, a graduate student in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation who’s interning at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The golden robot is currently checked into the Objects Conservation Lab at the National Museum of American History. His diagnosis: An internal support added to him in the mid-80s is deteriorating, and his gold coating is beginning to wear off after his many brushes with the Rebel Alliance.

The prognosis looks good. C-3PO has an advantage his human co-stars don’t: This patient’s parts are interchangeable.

“I have been in contact with people from Lucas Films and Industrial Light & Magic who have been very helpful in sharing with me how the costumes were manufactured, what could have caused some of the changes in appearance, and how other C-3PO costumes are aging with time,” Coughlin said. “They were even nice enough to send me an autograph from Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C-3PO.”

The bumbling C-3PO isn’t Coughlin’s only famous subject. She’s also worked on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s leg braces, Mr. Spock’s ears of Star Trek fame, a World War II bazooka and salsa singer Celia Cruz’s shoes.

She’s worked on a Civil War canteen, a lifebelt used on D-Day, Col. John Mosby’s crutches, a World War II rivet gun and the iron cladding from the C.S.S. Virginia. She also helped clean the first iron lung.

Every once in a while, when she was working on F.D.R.’s leg braces, Coughlin said, she’d just stop and think, “I can’t believe these are F.D.R.’s leg braces!”

C-3PO has an advantage his human co-stars don’t, Coughlin says. This patient’s parts are interchangeable.

“It is pretty powerful to look at them and think about the man who wore them, a man who didn’t let physical limitations stop his ambitions and a man who saw our country through some of its most trying times. I am really fortunate to play a small role in helping preserve his legacy,” she said.

The rivet gun and the life belt, now displayed in the museum’s “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War” exhibit, had a personal history dear to Coughlin.

“Working on all the World War II objects was very emotional,” she said. “It did make all the struggles, sacrifices and fears of that time period more real. My grandfather was a Navy doctor in World War II, so I imagine that he either was issued a lifebelt or was at least familiar with them. My grandmother was a ‘Rosie the Riveter,’ helping to manufacture airplanes during the war. It was a tangible link to the past.”

She said she worked on some objects she never would have expected when she began her studies, like the World War II bazooka and two prototype rockets. “When I got into conservation, I just never thought that one day I would work on a bazooka!” she said.

Coughlin, who will earn her master’s degree in August, said her experience has reinforced her belief that history is worth saving.

“The objects you see on display in museums are tangible links to our past. They give insights into our society as it has developed with time. If we lose those links, we run the risk of forgetting how we got to where we are now,” she said.

Article by Kathy Canavan
Photos by Jon Cox

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