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Fifty Halloweens later, Beverly Gondolfi is still Big Bird · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  Fifty Halloweens later, Beverly Gondolfi’s is still Big Bird. Written by Emily
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  Bebe. This article is being read by an automated voice brought to
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  you by Everlet. Fifty Halloweens later, Beverly Gondolpy's homemade Big Bird
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  costume is still going strong. Gundolfi, formerly from Marseille, built the costume
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  herself in 1976. She had no pattern, just a picture of the
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  Sesame Street character. On Friday, the 88-year-old put it on again for
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  Heritage Woods of Ottawa's Halloween party, her 50th year as Big Bird.
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  I didn't have no pattern, she’d said. I copied it from a
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  picture and just estimated everything on my own and figured out what
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  I needed to do. She was working at Dumka's greenhouse in Marseille
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  at the time, living in the house where she'd spend the next
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  sixty seven years before moving to Heritage Woods a little over two
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  years ago. Why big bird? She still doesn't know. She didn't watch
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  Sesame Street, but her children did. I don't know if it was
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  the colour or how big he was or what, but I really
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  don't know what triggered it, she said. The costume took a month
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  to make. Three yards of yellow material form a cape over a
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  chicken wire body held on with shoulder straps she fashioned herself. The
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  head is paper mosh, molded over a balloon. When the balloon came
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  out she fitted a construction hard hat inside so the head would
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  stay put. Her son Gil made the beak from cardboard and surprised
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  her with eyes made of ping pong balls. Cut-up coat hangers became
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  The tail and the feathers on top of the held
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  The first feathers were crepe paper until a rainy Halloween turned them
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  orange. She unstitched every one and replaced The with ten yards of
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  yellow material, which was the exact amount she needed. The felt feet
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  fell apart and were redone in leather. It's held up so nicely
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  for fifty years. You won't believe it, she said. It looks like
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  it was made yesterday. The Halloweens grew into more than she expected.
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  Some years close to two hundred kids came to her corner at
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  La Salle and Union in Marseille, some from as far as Seneca,
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  cars double parked on Halloween night. I'd be standing out in front,
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  and I'd her: voices way in the distance. She said. Big bird,
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  there's Big Bird. As those kids grew up, they began bringing children
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  of their own three generations worth of trick-or-treaters. My mom was doing
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  cosplay before there was cosplay, her son Galen Gondolfi said. Gundolfi remembers
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  giving her name at a store counter once and the clerk shouting
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  it back at her Big Bird the know me with the costume
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  on, but I take the costume off and they don't know me,
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  she said. Creating the costume was a family affair. Her son Gil
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  had been making costumes since 1973, when at 11 he transformed his
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  nine-year-old brother Glenn into the Wolfman. Beverley made Galen a Bugs Bunny
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  outfit in 1980 and he still wears the head to this day.
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  Her favorite memory is a little boy who reached into his pillowcase
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  and handed her his snuffle opagus, which was his favourite toy. That
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  moment I'll never forget, she said. At Heritage Woods she has worn
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  the costume to the facility's annual Halloween party every year she's lived
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  there. She was one of the only residents in full costume Friday
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  when the facility opened its party to the public. Her son Gil
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  helped her into the cause beforehand, since it is now a two
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  person job. Residents handed out candy to a stream of costumed children,
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  dressed as everything from Winnie the Pooh to SpongeBob. By around three
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  forty five PM, the crowd had mostly thinned and tired residents were
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  heading back to their rooms. Big Bird left the party at four
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  P.M. Gondolfi has advanced Parkinson's disease, but she's not letting age factor
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  in. I tell people I
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  don't like it here, she said of Heritage Woods. I love it.
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  Ottawa is the hometown of Bob McGrath, an original cast member when
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  Sesame Street debuted in 1969. McGrath died in 2022 at 90. I
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  think I got more recognition than Bob Grath himself that started it,
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  she said.
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  She turns eighty nine in December, and she said Big Bird may
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  be due for retirement, maybe. I have to put him in retirement
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  because I don't think at eighty nine I'll be able to get
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  in the costume, she said. It's not really that hard, but I
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  have to have balance. Whether Year 51 happens remains a mystery. People
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  have to wait and see. I'm pretty healthy for my age, I
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  guess. My mom lived to be one hundred and four, she said.
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  Galen hopes the tradition never entirely ends. We need more people dressing
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  up like Big Bird in the World, Galen Gondolpy said.