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Death Of Walt Disney
Walter Elias Disney died on December 15, 1966, ten days after his sixty-fifth birthday, in St. Joseph's Hospital -- directly across the street from the studio that he and his brother had built in Burbank, California. The nation and the world reacted in grief and disbelief, and condolences came to his family and his company from all over.
His brother Roy led the family and the company in continuing the projects Walt had begun. The Mineral King project, which had been enthusiastically approved at the time of Walt's death, was defeated by the Sierra Club in a lawsuit that went as far as the Supreme Court. The concept of EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, was revised to World Showcase and Future World. The acronym was kept, however, and EPCOT Center became Epcot.
The California Institute of the Arts was built in 1969 on a hill overlooking California's Interstate 5. The School of Animation was added by the Walt Disney Studio in 1978, staffed entirely by veterans of the Disney Animation Department, and its first class produced such stellar graduates as John Lasseter.
Roy Disney declared that "Disney World," the Florida project so important to Walt, would be named Walt Disney World, so that everyone would know it was his creation. The park opened in 1971, and Roy himself died soon afterward -- but not before ensuring that Walt's legacy would be carried on. |