Disney Production Cel

I haven't posted a piece of artwork since last December...so I thought I would share a special piece with you.

Back in 1978, I was working in a department at the Oklahoma State Department of Education, responsible for developing and delivering training for companies building new manufacturing plants in the state. Our mission was to have a ready trained workforce on the first opening day of the plant. It was a great job and I was fortunate to work with many Fortune 500 companies during this period in my career. My job was to conduct job and tasks analysis in view of writing technical training manuals for select jobs in the plant. Yeah, I think I have written over 100 training manuals in my time.

Anyway, one of my colleagues in the department was an amazing man that became a good friend of mine. His name was Mick. He was previously retired but came to work for the department as a way to keep busy and share his business expertise. He retired from Armour Foods as their EVP of Marketing. I learned much about business from Mick...and often, we would play a quick nine holes of golf after work.

One day after completing a round of golf, Mick wheeled his golf cart into his garage and said he wanted to give me something. He knew of my art background and said he had something for me. Sitting in the garage was a two-foot high stack of Disney production cels. Mick informed me that one of his main clients was the Disney company and he knew Walt Disney personally during the sixties. He obtained these cells from the Disney studio and would give his top performing sales people a production cell as recognition of their achievements. The sales people loved receiving one of these gifts. And then, he went through the stack and pulled out this cell from the animated movie, The Jungle Book. He picked one of the best pieces in the stack to ensure it had full characters and background art...and handed it to me. I have treasured this piece of original Disney artwork all these years and it still hangs on my home office wall with special pride.

Wonderful memories...