LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - APRIL 3, 2022 by Lynne Belluscio I suspect there are some people who wonder why I have been writing a flamingo story each year. The first one was written only a few months after I became Director of the LeRoy Historical Society. Thinking back, I am pretty sure it was because one year I visited Old Sturbridge Village on April 1 and I remember walking into the shoemakers shop, and it looked like Santa’s workshop. Then we noticed that someone had put soap in the mill race and bubbles were flying all around. And the craziness continued here and there throughout the village. I knew the man who was the special events director, who had instigated that, and I asked him why, and he just laughed. I don’t think that I saw any flamingoes that day, but it certainly sparked my imagination. A few years later, I was teaching open hearth cooking at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, and met one of the faculty members of the Cooperstown Museum Studies Program, and in his office were a few flamingo souvenirs - small lamps, statues, and dishes. It was a funny thing to see in his office, but I believe the flamingoes were presents from friends and students as a joke. At the time I was working at Genesee Country Museum, and we were hosting a group of students from the Cooperstown Museum Studies Program. By this time, they had adopted the flamingo as their mascot, so I had a few flamingoes placed in some “out of the way” places, to welcome them. By this time, folks had begun sending me flamingoes as a joke. And I don’t mean plastic flamingoes, I mean anything with a flamingo on it, including terrible seashell lamps, hats, stuffed plush toys. There was a store in Henrietta, called Flamingo Fannies which sold anything with a flamingo on it, and I know my friends shopped there. I have to admit I stopped there too and acquired some things for the collection. And some of the things were expensive, much to my husband’s chagrin. One beautiful carved wooden flamingo was especially nice, but alas, it apparently caught someone’s eye, and disappeared. I came to the LeRoy Historical Society in the fall of 1988 and brought the flamingo collection with me. The first Flamingo story, “The Day the Flamingoes Returned to Le Roy” appeared in the Pennysaver on April 3, 1989. The following year, the story wasn’t about flamingoes, but from 1991, there has been a flamingo story each year. Someone jokingly asked me if I was sober when I wrote them, and my response has always been, “I have to be, or I’d get the facts mixed up.” Because if truth be known, there are more facts than fiction in the articles. I have thought that I should take a marker and underline the fiction in each article and include that with a copy of all the articles. I remember talking with Alvin Stripp, who lived across from LeRoy House, on Trigon Park. He was a historian’s historian, and in our library is all his research. He said to me one day, “Lynne, you should never write those articles, because fifty years from now, someone will find them and believe them.” I guess he was right. I have to admit, there are some stories that have been more fun to write. I am always surprised to find more flamingo information. Like Don Featherstone, who was hired by Union Products, a plastics company, to sculpt a pink flamingo. Unable to find a live bird, he used a photo from National Geographic. His signature appears on all authentic plastic flamingos. I remember the day, that Stuart Seldon told me that he had seen a pink flamingo in Le Roy and went on to say that he had heard one had escaped from the Buffalo Zoo. Which brings me to Cheektowaga. When I first started writing the articles, there was a joke about folks in this suburb of Buffalo. They were known to have plastic flamingoes in their yards. As it turns out in 2018, they capitalized on their flamingo story and 1500 plastic flamingoes were displayed in Olmsted Park to set a Guinness Record. The flamingoes are called FLOmingo (FLO for Frederick Law Olmsted). Unfor t una t e l y,Aano t he r city claimed the record with 3,300 flamingoes, but Buffalo is not to be bested. This year on June 21, during the celebration of Olmsted’s 200th birthday, Buffalo will attempt to take back the title. As they have said, “It’s game time Buffalo!” Last year, with covid, the Le Roy flamingoes appeared at the Village Green Nursing Home and were warmly welcomed by all the residents. This year, the flamingoes will appear with a police escort at the Village Green Nursing Home and the Woodward Library. (And don’t forget to stop by the Library this month to see the exhibit of flamingoes.) As usual there will be flamingo decoys in front of Le Roy House. And if you are uptown, make sure you see the flamingoes in the front window of the Town Hall. And finally one additional note about flamingoes - - perhaps it should be flamingos . . . The True Story of Lynne and the Flamingoes
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