Fifty Halloweens later, Beverly Gondolfi is still Big Bird

Fifty Halloweens later, Beverly Gondolfi’s homemade Big Bird costume is still going strong.Gondolfi, formerly from Marseilles, built the costume herself in 1976. She had no pattern, just a picture of the Sesame Street character. On Friday, the 88-year-old put it on again for Heritage Woods of Ottawa’s Halloween party, her 50th year as Big Bird.“I didn’t have no pattern,” she said. “I copied it from a picture and just estimated everything on my own and figured out what I needed to do.”She was working at Dumke’s Greenhouse in Marseilles at the time, living in the house where she’d spend the next 67 years before moving to Heritage Woods a little over two years ago. Why Big Bird? She still doesn’t know. She didn’t watch Sesame Street, but her children did.“I don’t know if it was the color or how big he was or what, but I really don’t know what triggered it,” she said.The costume took a month to make.Three yards of yellow material form a cape over a chicken wire body, held on with shoulder