Roy E. Disney

On December 16 2009, Roy E. Disney passed away.  The nephew of Walt Disney, one of my many idols and the son of Roy O. Disney.  Rarely, I have ever been brought to tears because of the death of someone famous. Anyone who is reading this should the heartbreak I felt knowing a Disney died. Perhaps it is just my silly thinking but I never thought another Disney would die during my lifetime. I was so heartbroken and felt that part of the Disney magic had died that day as well.  I don't know I just felt so long as Roy was alive that Disney magic was still  there.

I say Disney magic and I use that term all the time, perhaps even loosely.  What do I mean by this, well part of is the the spirit and joy of Walt and his creations. From all the interviews that I watched with Roy, it was clear he had this magic.   Now some of you may find it hard such as I did with feeling sorrow over the loss of someone I never knew but I feel that Positive Troll put it best.

 . Like his Uncle Walt, he just had this presence about him that reminded you of a loved family member. You liked and trusted him when he spoke to you. I'm forever grateful that Roy was able to bring to fruition Walt's dream of continuing Fantasia(Fantasia2000 for the uninitiated-go see it NOW!!!!!). I

As much as I admire both Roy and his Uncle Walt, I don't think I could have said this any better.  Y'know with quote bringing up the fabulous Fantasia 2000. It only feels right that I include this clip.

Sorry but it was the best quality that I could find but I feel that it still works for this occasion.   If I could return to the 16th of December once more in this blog, I'd like to talk about how I found out about Roy's death and more importantly how I felt after I found out.  You see when he passed on, I learned about it in what had to be one of the hardest ways for me to learn of the death of someone so important to something I love so dearly. I was informed of his death over the phone by my best friend.  For some reason, it was hard learning about his death that way.  I mean if I had seen it on Good Morning America or even on Yahoo!,  I would have not been as saddened by this loss but it just stung and hurt more learning about this way.   Part of that comes from the fact that someone close and another Disney fan informed me but it was also verbal. Now this probably sounds odd as I just said learning about his death on Good Morning America would have been as heartbreaking. While it is true, that I would have heard the news in a verbal manner, it would have still felt distant because it was on TV whereas on the phone, that just felt sad because it was closer to me than the set of GMA.    

Now Roy actually did a lot to help keep Disney going such as getting the company back on it's feet not once but twice and he also played somewhat of a part in getting Eisner ousted.  Roy along his wife were name godparents of the first Disney Cruise Ship and got christen it as well.  Outside of Disney, he tried to help Richard Williams restore  on the latter man's  film, The Thief and The Cobbler.  Sadly, this never came to be.  

He also made a cameo in a later Mickey Mouse short featured on House of Mouse. But that was not his only cameo as there was also a non-speaking Roy Disney cameo on the same show where Roy appeared in a canoe with  Pocahontas .Sadly I could not find this clip but that is pretty cool thinking back to it now .

Now I know this article was not as biographical as my look at Wayne Allwine but this was a tad more personal and I wanted to talk about how his death affected me for the most part.  Though we need to remember him   for more than that and I apologize that I didn't go into more detail on that here but I wanted this article to be a bit more personal.  To end this out, why don't you watch this interview with Roy.  Out of all the articles that I have written not once did I ever shed a tear not even when I wrote my Sad Songs Music Fridays but while working on this article, I just lost it.  This article surprisingly had me in tears. It's hard to say why out of all the articles that I have ever written that one about Roy E. Disney, someone I never knew would cause me to cry but it did.   

Now this is actually from a 6 part interview but I only felt like posting the first part. You can watch the rest of it on YouTube though.  You know what this needs a picture of Roy and Mickey together.