Don Featherstone, Whose Pink Flamingo Brought Whimsy To Front Lawns Everywhere, Has Died

Whenever Don Featherstone‘s wife, Nancy, told people that her husband created the pink flamingo lawn ornament, they were usually very surprised.

“I never knew someone actually did that,” they’d say, the Sentinel Enterprise reported.

But Featherstone, who died Monday at 79 of Lewy body disease, can lay claim to that creation proudly. Though a very talented, classically trained artist adept at both sculpture and painting, he was pleased that his life work brought joy — and a bit of whimsy — to people’s lives, according to NPR News.

“I loved what I did, it’s all happy things. You have to figure, my creations were not things people needed in life, we had to make them want them. Things I did made people happy, and that’s what life is all about.”

Every year, Featherstone put 57 pink flamingos proudly in his front lawn to commemorate their birth.

Don created the pink flamingo in 1957, not long after he started working for Union Products. In a 2006 interview, Featherstone said he started working for the company after completing nine years at the Worcester Art Museum, hoping to avoid being a starving artist. The company was the first to make three-dimensional plastic items, he said, and they were looking for a sculptor.

Don Featherstone, who gave the world the pink flamingo lawn ornament, dies at 79. R.I.P. http://t.co/LCVtxghkYg pic.twitter.com/2CvxMUQCIF

— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) June 23, 2015

Don’s first job was to sculpt a duck, and he bought one to use as a model, keeping it in the sink while he copied it, letting it go later in a local park when he was done, the New York Times added. Featherstone’s employer then asked for a flamingo. He grabbed a copy of National Geographic and set to work using a photo as his guide.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The three-foot high pink flamingo first appeared in the Sears catalog at $2.76 a pair — one upright, the other with its head down — with the instructions “Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape.”

Following his death on Monday, friends and colleagues sung Don’s praises, calling him “generous and kind and so artistic.” Marc Abrahams, who founded the organization that awards the Ig Nobel Prize, a parody prize for unusual achievements and awarded to Featherstone in 2012, said he “always realized how completely goofy it was that people would fall in love with the flamingo, but they did.”

Featherstone’s flamingos are still a common sight on American lawns, and they aren’t going anywhere. Though Union Products — Don eventually became its president after 43 years — closed in 2006, the Cado Company of Massachusetts now makes its products, including his flamingo. These days, a pair will set you back $30.

Still passionately proud of her husband’s achievements, Nancy Featherstone said that she and Don “had a very strong relationship … I was very lucky to get him.”

Don battled Lewy body disease, which is a form of dementia, for years, but worsened over two years ago.

“It’s a terrible disease. You can’t do anything about it. But he fought it. He fought it to the best of his ability. He died with dignity. Donald was a class act. He was just a super-nice man. Just a super-nice man.”

[Photo Courtesy of Twitter]