The Youngquist Send Off -- Part II

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From left to right: Dale Oliver, Dave Davidovich, Don Duckwall, Don Griffith, Bill Berg, Julius Svendsen, Eric Cleworth, Hal King, Ted Berman, John Lounsbery, and Ollie Johnston.

Still more photographs from the Youngquist bye-bye party.

Dale Oliver (with the mustache) was an assistant animator at Disney who ended his career as an animator on The Fox and the Hound. (Dale served as a glider pilot landing troops in Normandy on D-Day. The odds of glider pilots surviving at Normandy were minimal, and I once asked him: "What did you do after landing?" He replied: "Not too much, just kind of stood around until they shipped me back to England." Relaxed attitude, no? Probably helped during that June morning of 1944. Dale retired from Disney after a bad car accident)...

David Davidovich was a background and layout artist who started in the biz at Warners in the mid-1930s. Don Duckwall was a long-time production manager in the animation department, with just the right name to work at Disney's. Don Griffith was a veteran layout artist who worked at the studio through the '80s.

Bill Berg was a long-time Disney story artist (mainly on shorts) who was working for Les Clark at this time. (You click on Bill's link, you're going to think that Bill later became an assistant animator and character lead on Lion King and other epics. That's a different Bill Berg, IMDb to the contrary.) Julius Svendsen was a veteran Disney animator and story artist. Sven's career was cut short when he died in a boating accident.

Eric Cleworth was an animator and story artist in Woolie Reitherman's unit. Eric had been at the studio since '39; a few years after this photo was taken, he retired with his Disney stock options and had a long and comfortable retirement in Morro Bay. Hal King was a pillar of the Disney animation department, having been an animator and directing animator for decades. Ted Berman was a story artist who ended his career as a director on The Black Cauldron. John Lounsbery, one of the "nine old men," was at this time a directing animator. At the time of his death (six years after this picture), he was a director on The Rescuers. At the far right is Ollie Johnston, directing animator and the last survivor of the Walt-designated "Big Nine".

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From left to right: Phil Meador, Ruth Tompson, Jim Swain, Fred Hellmich, Dick Lucas, Chuck Williams, Pat Lestina, Sylvia Niday, Barbara Orum, Bud Hester.

Philip Meador, the son of Disney vet Josh Meador, worked in Disney special effects; Ruth Tompson was a scene-planner. Jim Swain began his Disney career as an inbetweener in 1952; after working as an assistant animator, he moved on to assistant director. Fred Hellmich was a longtime Disney animator, later to move on to Hanna-Barbera and other studios. Dick Lucas animated on Disney projects from shorts in the fifties to The Fox and the Hound in the eighties. Chuck Williams was an assistant animator who'd been at Disney's from the 'fifties (and not to be confused with the later Chuck Williams.) Sylvia Niday started at the Mouse House in 1939. An assistant animator, she was part of the Animation Guild's first executive board in 1952 and retired from the business in '72. She passed away two decades after her retirement.

Barbara Orum worked in blue sketch. She joined Disney in 1955, and was later a Xerox checker at Hanna-Barbera. She died in 1991. Harry "Bud" Hester (the man with the beard) came to Disney in the early fifties after combat service in Korea as a bomber pilot. Long active in the Animation Guild, he served as TAG president and business representative, retiring from the industry in 1989.

Photos courtesy Bob Foster.