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Private Walt
Page 15 of 28 Creative Explosion: Life at home

Walt reads to his daughters

Walt reads to his daughters,
Sharon and Diane

tThough Walt kept his emotions bottled up, this did not seem to curtail his ability to enjoy his children. As always, he was obsessively involved in every detail of his work, but both Diane and Sharon recalled him as a fun-loving father, fully involved in their lives. He rarely missed birthdays, school plays, or other important events. The demanding perfectionism he exhibited at the studio was dropped at home. He admired Diane's drawings, saved them, and built her sense of confidence. When Sharon was in a school play, "no matter how bad I was, he'd say, 'You did a great job, kid,'" she recalled. He drove them to school every day, enjoying their company on the way there, and the time alone to think on the way back. When Diane was five or six, she recalled, "He told me the whole story of the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from "Fantasia" on the way to school one morning. The way he told it, there were the little villagers and the mountain where Satan comes out. I went into school, my eyes wide open, and got some kids in the corner and told the whole story right over again."
Even though Walt arrived home from the studio after seven in the evening, dinner with the family was a ritual, even when the children were young. Often dinners were full of conversation about their school or his work. Sometimes, if Walt had gone through a difficult day, he'd be impatient with his daughters, particularly if the girls monopolized the table with childish bickering. "I used to think, at the time, that he was being very unreasonable not to listen to me," Diane once observed. "But after I had children of my own, I thought he was entirely within his rights." Outings with Daddy were often simple. On weekends he'd take one or both of his daughters to the studio, where they hung around and played while he worked. Sharon recalled being fascinated by the zoetrope in his office. Weekend afternoons, they'd also often visit little amusement parks, the zoo, or the merry-go-round in Griffith Park. "I remember, you'd lean way out on your horse and you'd feel like a Valkyrie or something," said Diane. "I remember one time I kept getting the brass ring, and I found out later he had bribed the kid to keep putting it in as I came around." On those special days with his daughters, Diane recalled "When he was with us . . . he was with us! He wasn't hurrying us on. He was just there and enjoying us. Enjoying watching us in what we were doing and watching us enjoy things."
Walt with Diane and Sharon

Walt with Diane and Sharon

Walt whirling Diane

Walt whirling Diane
in their Palm Springs home

In what has become a famous comment about the origins of Disneyland, Walt recalled, "While they were on the merry-go-round riding 40 times or something, you know? I'd be sitting there trying to figure what you could do. And when I built the studio over there I thought, well, gee, we ought to have really a three-dimension thing that people could actually come and visit."
    In an effort to provide a real retreat from their day-to-day life, Walt rented, then purchased, a house in Palm Springs, California, in a resort community called Smoke Tree Ranch. At Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving the Disneys would take the four-hour drive and get away from everything. Walt got into the experience thoroughly, often wearing cowboy hats and boots as he taught his daughters how to ride horses. "He'd take me out for hours and devote so much time to getting me over my fear of horses," said Diane. "It seems to me that for hours and hours and hours he would play with us. Whirling us around by our heels or playing with us in the pool. He never seemed to tire of it. And even when we were a pretty good size, he used to carry us around on his shoulders." In their home, however, Walt was clearly in Lilly's domain. He deferred to her judgment on most domestic matters. 
Although Elias Disney had been a church deacon and Walt was actually named for the preacher of the St. Paul Congregational Church in Chicago, Walter Parr, he was not a church-going man. "He was a very religious man," said Sharon, "but he did not believe you had to go to church to be religious. . . . He respected every religion. There wasn't any that he ever criticized. He wouldn't even tell religious jokes." In January 1943, Walt wrote a letter to Ruth about Diane that nicely reflected his sentiments in this regard: "Little Diane is going to a Catholic school now, which she seems to enjoy very much. She is quite taken with the rituals and is studying catechism. She hasn't quite made up her mind yet whether she wants to be a Catholic or Protestant. I think she is intelligent enough to know what she wants to do, and I feel that whatever her decision may be is her privilege. I have explained to her that Catholics are people just like us and basically there is no difference. In giving her this broad view I believe it will tend to create a spirit of tolerance within her." Given the nature of this comment to his sister, it comes as something of a surprise to read some profiles of Walt that indicate he was anti-Semitic. Books like biographies by Leonard Mosely and Marc Eliot accept this notion as absolute truth. Yet in scores of interviews with the men, women, and family members who knew Walt best, not one recalled a single incident in which this alleged anti-Semitism showeed itself. Jewish employees like Joe Grant and the Sherman Brothers all violently defend Walt's memory. Even when Sharon dated a young Jewish man, her parents didn't voice any objections. Diane learns to swim

Diane jumps into Walt's open
arms as she learns to swim.

 
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