My father was a writer...
Well, he really was an Attorney for the US Government, but I believe his first love was really writing. In the biography my father wrote himself he said he started writing plays in preparation for retirement. I think he used that as an excuse to do what he seemed to love the most. I have remembered him forever being at the typewriter and that was years before retirement.
I have come across hundreds of letters he has written to his sister and brother, his mother, his wife and to my brother. He said at times that being a lawyer had so many spiritual drawbacks.
"This business of being an Attorney has so many spiritual drawbacks that I would love to chuck the whole business. I have hope of giving it all up some day and doing a little honest labor. What I should like to do is write, and that is what I would do if only I could keep my tenses straight, punctuate, spell and express myself, these being but minor handicaps I dare say that I shall overcome them yet which would leave me prepared and equipped to write, lacking only something to say. circa 1938"
He handwrote long letters to his wife and typed very long letters to his mother when he moved to California with all of the children. He wrote about the mundane things and the repairs of the house and the antics of the children.
In searching through my "roots" I found out that he came from a family of writers. His sister Dorothy Cameron Disney McKaye was a columnist and wrote Mystery books. I have had a copy of the 17th Letter written by her, in my possession since I was 12 and with the advent of the Internet I have located a few more that I also have read.
His brother Loren G Disney Jr. a.k.a. "Bud" was also a writer and seemed to be a reporter at times (City News Service in 1938) playwright, and a movie script writer. There was a hint or two of a book, but I have not found any records of it.
Now what really surprised me, is that my Grandmother apparently was a writer also. In 1938 my father wrote in a letter about some book she wrote and she also wrote him back and was inquiring about copyrights. The "Woman's Home Companion" which was being distributed or sold by magazine distributors and she was unhappy that they would not give her any copies that she could personally distribute herself.
Father worked for the government after the end of World War II and helped in the Decartilization of Germany. Decartelization is the transition of a national economy from monopoly control by groups of large businesses, known as cartels, to a free market economy. This change rarely arises naturally, and is generally the result of regulation by a governing body. An economic restructuring of Germany.
I donated all his papers related to the restructuring to Stanford University for the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace in 1986.
Here is a basic timeline of my father's life
1910 Born August 10th
<---------------Rheumatic/Scarlet Fever? *
1918 Influenza breakout in US and Spain
1924 Page in US Senate from 1924 through 1925 sessions
1928 Graduated HS
1928 Attended Oklahoma University through 1930
1929 Attorney US Dept of Justice through 1942
1930 Out for Depression
1932 Back to Oklahoma U. through 1933
1933 George Washington University Law School through 1936
1936 Married Francis Higbee Martin
1938 Worked for National Bituminous Coal Commission
1938 Loren G Disney Sr. Died
1939 Disney Oklahoma dam being built
1942 Entered US Army voluntary as Private
1946 Retired Major for disability after service in Italy
1947 Back to Oklahoma U. earning a degree in Humanities and Phi Beta Kappa through 1948
1948 Back to US Justice Department through 1950
1950 Attorney for Allied High Commission in Germany through 1954
<------------------------------------------------ Adopted 7 children in Germany
1955 Back to US Justice Department till retirement in 1975
* My father had scarlet fever when he was a boy which damaged his heart; and the reasons he had always stated why he couldn't have children, so adopted us, but I can only speculate the timeline based on the 1918 Influenza breakout in the US