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Walt and his best friend,
Walt Pfeiffer
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In Kansas City, Elias bought a newspaper route. Walt and Roy were his
staff, and he imbued in them a drive for perfectionism. Walt rose at
3:30 a.m. and was required to place every paper behind the customer's storm
door -- not out on the lawn like other newsboys. In the winter, crawling
up icy steps with heavy bags of papers more than once drove Walt to cold
tears. As a result, Walt's schooling was characterized by intermittently
successful efforts to stay awake. Occasionally, though, he'd surprise
his teachers. In fifth grade he memorized the Gettysburg Address, came
to school dressed as Lincoln, and performed for every class in the school.
He loved theatrics and studied Charlie Chaplin movies for tips on performing.
He and a buddy, Walt Pfeiffer, worked up little skits to act out at amateur-night competitions. A talent for art also clearly emerged, and Walt drew his own versions of Maggie and Jiggs, a popular comic strip.
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Elias has often been described as a ne'er-do-well who bounced from job to job. In fact, his newspaper route was very successful, and he began investing money in a jelly firm in Chicago, the O'Zell Company. O'Zell planned to produce a bottled carbonated beverage, and Elias was convinced that such drinks had a big future. So he sold the paper route, increased his investment in the factory to $16,000, and became head of the company's plant construction and maintenance. This, of course, required moving to Chicago. Unfortunately, the executives in charge were less than honest, and O'Zell didn't last very long. When Walt's folks left for Chicago, he chose to stay behind for the summer. He lived in the family house with Roy and his oldest brother, Herbert, who by now was married and had a two-year-old daughter, Dorothy.
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In this caricature
by the young Walt,
he portrays himself
trying to borrow money
from his father, Elias,
who is standing in front of
the O'Zell plant
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In his freshman year at McKinley High, Walt tried out different characters and artistic styles
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Roy decided that it would be educational for Walt to have a summer job selling newspapers, candy, fruit, and soda on the Santa Fe Railroad. Walt loved the uniform, the trains,
the candy, and the chance to see the country. He paid scant attention to
the business end of the enterprise, however, and wound up losing money.
Walt didn't mind. He never did anything for the money. At summer's end,
he joined his family in Chicago, where he attended McKinley High School.
But his mind was thousands of miles away, on the battlefields of Europe.
Walt wanted to be part of the War to End All Wars. In the meantime, he
attended the Chicago Institute of Art, worked at the O'Zell Company, and
drew patriotic sketches for the school paper. When school let out for
the summer, he began to work at the post office, where he narrowly escaped
an untimely end when the building was bombed.
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In the summer of 1918,
Walt was 16 -- too young for the military. When he heard that the Red
Cross Ambulance Corps would accept 17-year-olds, he lied about his age,
joined, and began training. All the same, he almost missed his chance when
he came down with influenza in an epidemic that killed about 20 million people worldwide. The war ended. But the Ambulance Corps still needed 50 more men, and Walt was the fiftieth selected. He was on his way to France. For the next year, Walt drove an ambulance, chauffeured officers, played poker, started smoking, and wrote letters. Contrary to myth; because he was never dishonorably discharged from the army (a particularly peculiar myth; he
was never in the army). He made money with another young man painting
helmets with camouflage colors, banging them up to look battle-scarred,
and then selling them to Americans in search of realistic souvenirs.
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Walt with other members of
the Red Cross Ambulance
Corps in France
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