The premiere of Judith Lindstedt’s documentary “Featherstone’s Flamingo: Pink and Proud” at the Fitchburg Historical Society in Oct. 9:

FITCHBURG – One Christmas, Nancy Featherstone, 63, decided to surprise her husband, Don.

She had the family over for dinner, and she’d hired a Santa Claus to come to the house. She left the front door open.

And then Santa showed up, yelling, “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”

Don said, “Who’s that?” And she said, “I don’t know. It looks like Santa Claus to me.”

Unsurprisingly, he came bearing gifts, and the one he gave to Don contained a lump of coal.

Nancy said: “Oh, my gosh, Donald. What did you do? That’s a lump of coal!”

Santa saw how dejected Don was and went back outside to retrieve another present. It was one she’d purchased for him – a 6-foot-tall bronze flamingo, with a bow around its neck.

“Donald was thrilled with his bronze flamingo,” she said.

You see, the flamingo wasn’t a random gift. Her husband, who died Monday at the age of 79, was the creator of the pink lawn flamingo. And it was something for which he’d become famous throughout the world.

SLIDESHOW: Remembering Don Featherstone

But it was never something he’d brag about or bring up on his own. Nancy said she’d tell people – often in Don’s presence – that her husband was the one who created the popular lawn ornament.

And they’d say, “I never knew someone actually did that.”

Or, “How old are you, anyway?”

“He got a kick out of it; he enjoyed it,” she said, referring to the recognition he received for his creation.

Featherstone, born in Worcester and raised in Berlin, studied art at the Worcester Art Museum.

“Donald had nine years of formal art training,” Nancy Featherstone said, adding that he was “an extremely talented artist.”

“He particularly enjoyed sculpting and painting,” she said.

He worked for Union Products for 43 years and made over 600 items for them, she said. There, he did a lot of sculpting. Painting took a back seat.

But when he retired, he got back into painting, sharing his work only with her.

“(The paintings) were for us,” she said.

He did do a few public pieces, though. One was a version of the painting called “The Bookworm,” which he submitted to a contest at the Fitchburg Public Library.

He put a flamingo in it. And he won.

It ended up on a gift card that is still sold today, she said.

His flamingo also got him into a movie, 2011’s “Gnomeo & Juliet,” distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. In it, there is a character, a pink lawn flamingo, named in his honor: Featherstone, played by Jim Cummings.

A film distributed by Disney was perhaps the most appropriate, for his life was one of magic, right down to how he and Nancy met.

In August 1975, they were both in Chicago for a trade show, and Don saw Nancy walking toward him, she said. Right then, he knew she was the one.

At the beginning of their first date in January 1976, he gave her an engagement ring. They were married in July. Next month – July 23 – would have been their 39th anniversary.

“Donald and I had a very strong relationship,” she said. “Very good marriage, very strong.

“I was very lucky to get him.”

And so many others said they were lucky to know him.

“He was a very nice guy,” said Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of Annals of Improbable Research, the organization that awarded Featherstone the Ig Nobel prize, whose title is a parody of the Nobel and which is given for unusual or trivial scientific achievements, in 1996. “He always realized how completely goofy it was that people would fall in love with the flamingo, but they did.”

Judith Lindstedt, director of the documentary “Featherstone’s Flamingo: Pink and Proud,” which was about Don, called him a “marvelous person.”

“He was so generous and kind and so artistic,” she said. “It’s just overwhelming how talented he was. He had brought a distinction to the Montachusett area because of his famous pink flamingo. Everybody knows it, all over the world.”

She said she was “saddened, really, to the core, to hear of his passing.”

Nancy said her husband had a lengthy battle with Lewy body disease, which is a form of dementia. He got sick years ago, but it was somewhat manageable – that is, until 2 1/2 years ago.

“It’s a terrible disease,” she said. “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,” Nancy Featherstone said of her husband. “He was just a super-nice man. Just a super-nice man.”

She said he died peacefully at 9 a.m. Monday, surrounded by his family. He was at the Caldwell Home in Fitchburg.

Don Featherstone had two children, Judith Nelson and Harold Featherstone.

She said there will be a wake Friday – calling hours have not been set – at the Brandon Funeral Home, at 305 Wanoosnoc Road, Fitchburg. The funeral will be Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at St. Joseph’s Church.

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The premiere of Judith Lindstedt’s documentary “Featherstone’s Flamingo: Pink and Proud” at the Fitchburg Historical Society in Oct. 9: