Walt Disney’s older brother Roy was born on this day in 1893. He was not only a co-founder of the Disney company in 1923, but the financial genius behind it. When former Chief Disney Archivist Dave Smith was asked about his favorite memories working at the Company, he recalled, “I think some of my favorite memories go back to my earliest years with the Archives. Because when I started here, Roy O. Disney was still working here, Ub Iwerks was still working here, the “nine old men” were still working here, and I got to talk with them and know them. Roy, in fact, hired me in my spare time to compile the Disney genealogy and sent me on a trip around the country to visit with Disney family members and to search out gravestones in cemeteries and all sorts of interesting things like that, so I was really fascinated by that work that I did for Roy and I think he was very appreciative of it.” Dave also remembered Roy as a very modest man. “He didn’t want to be in the forefront. He told me he was very insistent that he didn’t want his name on the company and he felt that the creative brother should have his name on the company, so it was his idea to change it Walt Disney Productions.”
