My father was always drawing at home so I grew up with art. My mother was a concert pianist and so she was always playing the piano. So between music and art, and Herbie coming to visit often, being my godfather, he was always sketching. He did these wonderful character sketches of all of us kids. He'd tear them off of his tablet and throw them in the trash and Daddy would pick them up and take them and, of course, frame them. So growing up with art and music was a way of life for me. And when I went to high school, I was an art major. I wanted to go into theater arts and be a set designer. And I did very well with crafts. I did a lot of sewing for the local theater and so forth. And when I graduated from high school, it was like, "Panic Time." What am I going to do? This was in the 1960s. Not a really nice time for us. All of my friends were going off to Vietnam. Lots of stuff going on at the campuses that was uncomfortable ... for me because I was this little conservative person. Kind of a sheltered life. You know, a Disney life. So the world was kind of traumatic for me. And I was a little intimidated by it.

WED Enterprises at that time had what they called a summer hire program for sons and daughters of some of the executives. You could do anything for the summer. You could come in and take inventory for them. And you could answer the telephone. Whatever they needed done. And it was really cheap labor. So, off to work I went in the summer of 1968. Drove in everyday with Daddy and since I had a craft background, I was hired in the Model Shop. What heaven! I have to tell you. When you see Harriet Burns, she was one of my mentors. Just an incredible, incredible lady.

And my first assignment was to feather a tiki bird for the Tiki Room. Piece of cake. Glue feathers on. No big deal. Wrong! I learned very quickly there's left-sided feathers and right-sided features. That there is a color scheme. There's a design to it. There's special lighting requirements and what colors work well with what lighting. There's a story that's being told. So I learned very fast that storytelling, for what the guest is going to see, is very important. And it's important that when you are doing the work to understand what the story is. The design of the bird itself. Why the sculptor sculpted it a certain way. It has a flavor and certain aspects of it that are realistic but it has a caricature to it that brings that special Disney touch. So I glued left and right on the opposite direction. If you are a taxidermist, we did the opposite because the way that we wanted the feathers to lay. People like Harriet were the ones that had to figure out how to do it because nobody had done it before. So it was great fun to experiment as you went along and learn about materials.

So when it came time to go to school in September, I remember driving home with Daddy saying, "Ohhh, can I just stay?" Of course, WED was very small at that time. Everybody knew everybody. He said, "If you supervisor says okay..." Now this is after a lot of tears and a lot of arguing because, you know, education is extremely important. But anyway if the supervisor was okay and I if I did it on my own and so forth ... and this was all production for Walt Disney World ... he said, "Okay." So, I went to my supervisor the next day and talked very long and very hard. And he was pleased with the quality of my work. And people like Harriet and Joyce Carlson and so forth were very supportive of me. Even though I was the boss' daughter and they were a little intimidated. But we worked through that. It worked out very well.

So I got to stay and work on all the new production for Walt Disney World and anything else that was going on at Disneyland at the time. We had to keep up some of the maintenance for that. So I did everything that you can imagine. Gluing leaves on netting for jungle natives that are rising out of the jungle. Taking Alice in Wonderland's legs and feet to the local shoe store to try and buy shoes for her. That was quite an experience. They weren't quite sure what I was doing. And so it was really a fascinating experience.

We opened Walt Disney World in '71 and unfortunately my father came home very ill during that process in September before the park opened in October and he was ill for five years before he passed on. And he never got to see Walt Disney World open, which was really sad. But lots of pictures, lots of people giving him wonderful reports on how well it did. And, of course, his first love was Disneyland. And he stayed very in touch with what was going on.

A little side note - nine out of the 10 of us have worked for Disney at some part of our careers - and none of us anymore. We're retired and onto other things in life. It's quite a history. It's a fairy-tale life that I've had. Loving parents. Loving grandparents. A beautiful home. Beautiful family. It's really quite remarkable.

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-Photo and transcription by Matthew Walker
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