Company co-founder Roy O. Disney began dating Edna Francis in Kansas City, Missouri, around 1911. “Roy and I were just going together,” she later recalled. “We stopped at a drugstore to get a soda, and Walt came to see Roy because he wanted a quarter or a half-dollar for paper to draw on. Even then, Roy provided the money for Walt’s artistic ambitions.” After Roy served in the Navy in World War I, he contracted tuberculosis, spending the next several years recuperating at military hospitals in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. After Walt moved to Hollywood in 1923, Roy left the hospital to help his brother start his film studio. Roy wrote to “his girl” Edna and they were married at the home of Uncle Robert Disney on Kingswell Avenue. Edna frequently assisted with office work at the fledgling studio, and along with Walt’s wife, Lillian Bounds Disney, helped ink and paint animation cels.
