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June 23, 2015 02:00 AM

Obituary: Pink flamingo sculptor Don Featherstone

Bill Bregar
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    Don and Nancy Featherstone were known for wearing matching outfits. Don Featherstone, the sculptor of the iconic pink flamingo, died June 22.

    Don Featherstone, a sculptor who created the pink flamingo — and simultaneously became an icon of offbeat American culture, himself — died on June 22 at the Caldwell Home extended care facility in Fitchburg, Mass.

    He was 79.

    His wife, Nancy Featherstone, said he died surrounded by family members. He had Lewy body disease, a type of dementia, she said.

    “He had it for a long time. We didn't know it. It was only diagnosed two years ago,” Nancy said. “He had it for years, we just didn't know what it was.”

    Don Featherstone's death sparked widespread media attention. Nancy Featherstone said she had just returned from the Caldwell Home after her husband passed away, when the phone rang. It was the Boston Globe.

    That is a testament to Featherstone's fame.

    Featherstone was just 21 years old when Union Products Inc. hired him. The blow molder in Leominster, Mass., specialized in plastic lawn ornaments. The pink flamingo was already popular, dating to the mid-1880s when they were made of cast iron. Union Products' first model was a flat, injection molded version.

    “They looked like stuff you'd find in manual training class, with cut wood,” Featherstone said in a Plastics News article published in 1996. Ugly. Then the year before he joined the company, Union Products came out with a three-dimensional foam bird. Dogs liked to chew it up.

    When he arrived in 1957, Featherstone's first assignment was sculpting Charlie the Duck. Then he worked on a better flamingo. The company injection molded two halves then glued them together. But then in the early 1970s, Featherstone sculpted the blow molded flamingo.

    Today nobody remembers Charlie the Duck.

    Featherstone worked for Union Products for 43 years. He designed hundreds of lawn ornaments, from pilgrims to witches to Uncle Sam figures. The pink flamingo is the one that really took off, jazzing up the lawns of suburban tract houses and the loft apartment of hipsters, alike.

    Wikimedia Commons

    The children's film "Gnomeo and Juliet," which featured animated lawn ornaments, named its pink flamingo character Featherstone.

    Featherstone's name is engraved on the bottom of every flamingo that Union Products made. They sell on eBay as collectibles. People started businesses renting dozens of flamingos in someone's yard to celebrate birthdays, or just as a gag.

    The lighthearted Featherstone loved to throw out one-liners. At a housewares show, laughing crowds jammed around the small Union Products booth. Did Featherstone ever think the plastic pink flamingo would become such a hot item? “Of course not. No more than the chicken with a bonnet that I'm sculpting right now is gonna make it,” he said in the Plastics News article.

    He retired in 2000. When Union Products shut down in 2006, fans rushed to Don and Nancy Featherstone's Victorian house in Fitchburg, asking him to sign their flamingos. Some went in the front yard, some got slapped up on eBay.

    Hollywood came calling in the 2011 animated movie "Gnomeo and Juliet." The movie included a pink flamingo named Featherstone.

    Around the Leominster area, Don and Nancy stood out because they dressed alike for most of their long marriage. She made the clothes. It made them feel a special closeness, they said.

    “He was the best. You couldn't ask for a better husband,” Nancy said. “He had a great sense of humor, was humble, kind. Everybody wanted to know how we had such a wonderful marriage. I learned to say ‘yes dear' very early on. We didn't fight — we didn't have anything to fight about. He gave me everything I wanted.”

    Nancy Featherstone said there will be a wake June 26 at the Brandon Funeral Home in Fitchburg. Details are being worked out. The funeral will be June 27 at St. Joseph's Church.

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