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Ela Twp.'s Pumpkin Man to retire after 50 years of fun

You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but the kindly old man in the golf cart has an alter ego that has grown to impressive proportions.

For 50 years, neighbors and school kids in an unincorporated enclave near Kildeer have come to associate Halloween with Pumpkin Man, a straw-filled character that dispenses wisdom and wise cracks.

Goodmon “Bud” Goodmonson has forgotten exactly why he decided to stuff a pair of his automotive coveralls with straw and top it with a basketball for a head, but he does remember the next step in the evolution that made Pumpkin Man a local household name.

“I ran a wire out there and put a speaker in,” he said Tuesday, as the annual Halloween decorating ritual got under way. “I'd sit in the house here and when the kids walked by, Pumpkin Man would talk to them. They got a charge out of it.”

Three generations of kids and parents share the memories. But at age 91 — and after a half century of playing the role — Goodmonson has decided this Halloween will be the last call.

“I've been wanting to quit a long time, but they won't let me,” Goodmonson joked about his grandson, Dan Douglas, and neighbors like Kathy Rossi.

“Everybody got excited about it at the school,” the 28-year-old Douglas said of nearby Charles Quentin School, which he attended as a boy. “You had your Halloween parties, but we got to talk to the Pumpkin Man. The Pumpkin Man was like the Santa Claus of Halloween.”

Rossi said it's been “50 years of a wonderful man doing something wonderful for the community.”

She and Douglas, who took over the speaking duties two years ago, spent the day decorating the front and side yards with orange and black ribbons, cutouts and inflatables of bats, cats and other creatures, and, of course, the old fencing that contains the Pumpkin Man's patch of straw and corn stalks.

“You see the kids happy and enjoying it. It's meant to be Halloween fun, not scary,” Goodmonson explained.

Pumpkin Man's basketball head was succeeded by a real pumpkin and, in recent years, a plastic one that contains the now-ancient apparatus that allows him to talk.

But the white coveralls are the same, as are the boots — reminders of Goodmonson's long-ago occupation as an auto-body man in Chicago.

He and his wife, Gloria, moved to what was then recently retired farmland off Rand Road 64 years ago. Residents stay for long periods and the small neighborhood without sidewalks or curbs remains close-knit.

The attraction to Goodmonson's effort has come from within. Between neighbors, Quentin School students and clients of the Countryside Association for People with Disabilities next door, as many as 500 or more would come to visit Pumpkin Man. And each visitor got a piece of candy.

“It's one of the things that makes the neighborhood a neighborhood,” said Wayne Kulick, Countryside's executive director. “Of course when they do their Halloween extravaganza, it's something we always look forward to.”

The Goodmonsons' son, Gregory, had Down syndrome and in 1954 they became one of the five founding families of the Countryside Association for People With Disabilities.

Gregory died in 2005, but the connection has remained strong. A few weeks ago, the Goodmonsons attended the groundbreaking of an expansion of what is now a $5.4 million organization that helps children and adults with developmental and other disabilities.

With the closing of Quentin two years ago and a dwindling number of little ones in the neighborhood, it was decided that 50 was a good number on which to close.

Goodmonson said he'll miss the experience.

“We get more enjoyment out of it than the kids who come down to see it.”

  91-year-old Goodmon “Bud” Goodmonson, right, and his grandson, Dan Douglas, flank Pumpkin Man, created by Goodmonson 50 years ago. Gilbert R. Boucher II/gboucher@dailyherald.com
  A paver from the now closed Quentin School was given to 91-year-old Goodmon Goodmonson and his wife, Gloria in recognition of their popular Halloween attraction. Gilbert R. Boucher II/gboucher@dailyherald.com
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