I wanted to dedicate a special place on our website to the man responsible for it all!  The following information is taken from Wikipedia:

Donald Featherstone (January 25, 1936 – June 22, 2015) was an American artist most widely known for his 1957 creation of the plastic pink flamingo, while working for Union Products. Featherstone resided in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where he kept 57 plastic flamingos on his back lawn!  Featherstone and his wife Nancy dressed alike for over 35 years.

Featherstone was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1936 and grew up in nearby Berlin.  After graduating from the Worcester Art Museum's art school, in 1957, he was offered a job designing three-dimensional animals for Union Products, Inc.  Over his years at Union Products, Featherstone sculpted over 750 different items, the first two of which were a girl with a water can and a boy with a dog. When Featherstone was asked in 1957 to sculpt a duck, he purchased one, which he named Charlie, and later released the bird in Coggshall Park.  Later that year, he was asked to carve a flamingo. The now iconic pink flamingo went on sale in 1958, when the color pink was popular.

In 1996, Featherstone was awarded the 1996 Ig Nobel Art Prize for his creation of the pink flamingo, and he also began his tenure as president of Union Products which he held until he retired in 2000.

On June 22, 2015, Featherstone died at the age of 79.