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Marjorie Sewell (left)
and Dorthy Disney
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Walt loved children.
Before he had his own, his nieces, Dorothy (brother Herb's daughter) and
Marjorie (sister-in-law Hazel's daughter) were recipients of his affectionate
generosity. "Aunt Lilly made me clothes for my dolls," said Marjorie.
"And Uncle Walt gave me skates and scooters and all the exciting things."
In 1930, Hazel and Marjorie moved in with Walt and Lilly, and Walt acted
the father role to the hilt. If Marjorie came home late, Walt would be waiting
for her at the top of the stairs when she opened the door. Much to Walt
and Lilly's dismay, their first two pregnancies ended in miscarriages.
The third time around, in 1933, Walt wrote to his mother, "Lilly is partial
to a baby girl. I, personally, don't care -- just as long as we do not
get disappointed again." They weren't. On December 18, 1933, Diane Marie
Disney was born.
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Weeks before Diane
was born, Walt wrote, "I've made a lot of vows that my kid won't be spoiled,
but I doubt it -- it may turn out to be the most spoiled brat in the country."
Walt's initial tendency was to surround his daughter with toys and games
-- Christmas of 1934 featured a giant tree and a sea of presents. But
true to his vow, he didn't spoil her. "Dad realized after a time that
the more you want things, the better you like them," Diane said. Walt
wanted more children, and when Lilly suffered another miscarriage they
decided to adopt. In January 1937, two-week-old Sharon Mae Disney entered
the family. The girls had little idea their father was famous. "We weren't
raised with the idea that this was a great man," said Sharon. "He was
Daddy."
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Walt, Lilly, and Diane
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Walt reading from Pinocchio to Sharon (left) and Diane
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It would have been
easy to get newspaper photographers to cluster around little Diane and
Sharon sitting on Mickey Mouse's lap or attending a new cartoon. But Walt
and Lilly kept the girls out of the public eye, both for their safety
and out of a desire for privacy. This was an incredibly busy time for
Walt. He was churning out Mickey Mouse cartoons and Silly Symphonies that
garnered a host of Academy Awards. And by the time Sharon entered the
family, he had thrown himself thoroughly into work on Snow White, even
while thinking about other feature-length animated films that might follow.
In 1937, Walt and Roy grew concerned about their parents who had been
running a rooming house in Portland. Their health wasn't great, and the
boys could afford to buy them a house in California and hire a housekeeper
to help take care of it.
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The gas heating in
the house wasn't properly installed. Flora had complained that the furnace
wasn't operating well, and Walt sent studio repairmen to fix it. But they
didn't succeed. So, on the morning of November 26, 1938, gas fumes spread
through their home. When Elias woke up, he found his wife's body on the
bathroom floor. He passed out himself trying to carry her to another room.
When their housekeeper began to feel dizzy she rushed to check on them,
found them both unconscious, and got a neighbor to help her get them out
of the house. It was too late for Flora. Elias survived, but never completely
recovered. And though nobody knows precisely how he felt, it would appear
that Walt never got over the tragedy either. Years later, he wouldn't
even talk to Sharon about it.
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Elias and Flora at their 50th anniversary in January 1938. In November of that year, Flora died from gas fumes caused by a leaky furnace
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