Flamingo Queen

Flamingos are everywhere you look in Florida. You can’t drive anywhere in the state without passing pink flamingo mailboxes or plastic yard decorations. At Tampa International Airport, a floor-to-ceiling art installation of a flamingo welcomes visitors in the main terminal. And in the city of Tampa itself, you can walk past a flamingo motel, a flamingo museum and a flamingo restaurant within a 15-mile radius.

The pink plastic flamingo may have taken a backseat to the corgi dog and horse when it comes to the most recognizable symbol of Florida culture, but there is no denying that this exotic tropical bird has carved out its own niche in the heart of Floridians. The flamingo’s popularity is due to its color, its personality and its ubiquity in popular culture. The flamingo’s iconic status has even made it the subject of several movies and TV shows.

But the flamingo’s real-life origin story is perhaps the most intriguing of all. In the late 1800s, flamingos were nearly hunted into extinction by hunters seeking their plumes for ladies’ hats and as a food source. Their plight accelerated in the early 1900s, when overhunting and pollution pushed the birds closer to the brink.

Fortunately, the endangered flamingo rebounded from the near-extinction crisis by becoming a popular yard decoration. In the mid-1960s, sculptor Don Featherstone reimagined Phoenicopterus ruber plasticus with slender rodlike legs and created the plastic lawn ornament now known as a flamingo. The sculptor also gave the bird its signature insouciant stance, which made it the ideal totem of suburban contentment and, later, ironic kitsch.

In the ’70s, Featherstone’s flamingos became the unofficial mascot of the era’s carnival of schlock and self-conscious rebellion against all things tasteless. By the 1980s, it was cool to be a flamingo again, as evidenced by the ubiquity of John Waters’ 1972 gallows comedy Pink Flamingos, which stars drag queen Divine. Today, it’s even possible to find a flamingo-themed T-shirt or pair of sunglasses.

When the flamingo queen retired from teaching at Beach Elementary School in Pascagoula, she was treated to a parade of dozens of vehicles decorated with pink flamingos as students, parents and community members came out to show their love and appreciation. Many people brought her flamingo-themed gifts, including corgi dogs and horses (her two favorite animals) as well as a variety of painted, drawn and crocheted flamingos.

She plans to spend her retirement traveling and staying in touch with friends and family via social media. “The greatest thing has been the love and support from everyone,” Hunter said. “I’m a very blessed woman.” She will continue to teach reading at night at the Pascagoula Adult Learning Center, which she has done for 45 years, and hopes to make more friends. The flamingos she will miss most, though, are the ones from her classroom. “They have taught me so much,” she said. “They have changed my life.”