I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Ollie Johnston's Celebration of Life at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on 19 August 2008. I was took my friend JC Tregarthen who is also a Disney fan. The evening was amazing and I truly wish I could've had the opportunity to meet this amazing man. Ollie Johnston was the last remaining member of Walt's 9 Old Men. These men were the animation department for the Walt Disney Company from the beginning until the 1978. Working on every feature length animated feature from Snow White through The Rescuers.  Frank Thomas and Ollie were Stanford graduates, life long friends, neighbors, co-workers and leaders in the Cal Arts movement to mentor their replacements, many of these appeared at the event including John Lassiter. The highlight of my evening... after the event I was able to meet Kathryn Beaumont and get a photo with her, thanks JC.

 A piece Ollie did, his original plan was to be a fashion artist for catalogs and magazines. Ollie explained the move to animation, "I wanted to paint pictures full of emotion that would make people want to read the [magazine] stories. But I found that here [animation] was something that was full of life and movement and action, and it showed all those feelings."

Ollie Johnston created his own Christmas cards every year, here are a few...

The evening was hosted by Leonard Maltin and guests included Roy O Disney, Ollie's surviving sons Rick and Ken, and many artists whom Ollie mentored.

John Lasseter, mentored by Ollie

A Special Morning at Disneyland - 10 May 2005 7:00am

John Lasseter told the story, Ollie had to sell his property in Julian California where his full scale train, the Marie E (named for his wife who died just 10 days later) which he personally restored and built the caboose from scratch. John Lasseter purchased the train and relocated it to his newly acquired property in Sonoma. John had the idea of celebrating Ollie's contribution in introducing Walt to railroading, which eventually led Walt to build Disneyland. So John contacted Michael Eisner with his idea and got permission to put Ollie's train the Marie E, onto the tracks at Disneyland for the event. After presenting the award Ollie was able to run his train around the tracks at Disneyland 3 times. Ironically, the origin of the train was a mine, so the train was run only forwards and backwards. Then in Julian Ollie's track also was inline and again the train only ever ran forward and back. So this day was the first time in the locomotive's history that it ever ran in a full circle. Another interesting side note: Disney has a policy that if assets are brought onto Disney property only employees of that company can touch that asset. Thus Michael Eisner, Bob Iger and other cast members would not have been able to ride the train if Lassester had not hired them into Pixar at a rate of $1 per day.

Ollie's daughter in law concluded the evening with a montage of family photos.

No one is finally dead until the
ripples they cause in the world
finally die away.

- Terry Pratchett ..

Ollie Johnston will live forever

Most of the photographs on this page are photographs of photographs that were shown at the event. I claim no copyright or credit for the image. I do not have the original photographer's information to provide credit. Thus none of these images contain my mark.
All sketches and artwork by Ollie Johnston, characters ©Walt Disney Company