Hey there, hi there, ho there! Today’s “This Day in Disney” is all about Disney Legend Jimmie Dodd (because we like him, and because he was born on this day in 1910). To learn more about the man who brought his kind wisdom and gentle entertainment into our living rooms in the 1950s (and in reruns for decades), we turned to somebody who was quite close with him, Mouseketeer Bobby Burgess. Bobby told us, “Jimmie was the perfect host for the Mickey Mouse Club. He was youthful and enthusiastic. He wrote most of the songs for the Mickey Mouse Club and he got along great with the kids. He had no kids of his own, so we were his mousekekids. He was religious, but he didn’t push that on you. He belonged to the Hollywood Christian group, and some of us did attend a few times. He organized a thing over at the Beverly Hilton called the ‘Share the Blessings Brunch’ at Easter time, so if we wanted to say a few words to the audience, he always had a lot of nice people over there. When I went to Australia in ’59 and ’60, because I was in my turn around and being a teenager, I didn’t have my mother and father go, everybody else did, so Jimmie and Ruth became my mousekemom and mousekedad and were my guardians when we did our Australia tour. We were always very close, in fact he wrote ‘Father and Son,’ the special song and dance that we did on the Mickey Mouse Club, for he and I, because a lot of people thought we were related because we had big hair and big smiles with big teeth. He went over to Hawaii and was doing the Jimmie Dodd Aloha Hour when he passed away. It was going to be another kids’ show that he was working on. He was a great guy.”
