At Home On Sesame Street

Few people realize that Big Bird, Elmo, Oscar the Grouch and the Cookie Monster have a home in Vero Beach. But they do.

It’s not their house, of course. But they live there in the mind and heart of the home’s owner, Joan Ganz Cooney. It was Joan, 32 years ago, who helped to create a program called Sesame Street, which revolutionized children’s television not only in the United States but all over the world.

The story of how Joan started the show that features some of the best-loved characters on television begins a long way from Vero Beach. Joan Ganz was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1929, the youngest child of a three-sibling family raised by a prosperous banker and his wife.

Read the entire article in the February 2002 issue