Becoming a Legend

It began, as these things do, with a letter. One went out to every member of that year’s class — and to one name beyond it: Michael Eisner, only recently departed as the company’s chief executive. Eisner would quietly decline. For the company to hand its just-departed boss such an honor struck him as too self-serving — and, with Roy E. Disney having only recently spent millions on a campaign to force him out, Eisner had no appetite to reopen that wound. But that is a story for another day.

Ron wasn’t sure the honor was worth the trouble. So he did what he always did when he needed a straight answer — he asked his assistant. “What is this Disney Legends thing,” he wanted to know, “and is it really worth doing?” The assistant was Bill Zanetti, and the answer came without a moment’s hesitation: yes. Absolutely, yes.

There was a condition. You cannot simply be named a Disney Legend from afar — you have to be there, in the room, to receive it, with exceptions granted only in the rarest of circumstances. So Ron boarded a plane for California, and Bill stayed behind to cover his classes for the day.

He returned glowing. For weeks afterward he talked about the people he had stood among — Bob Iger, newly named CEO; John Lasseter; Bob Gurr; Dave Smith; and Wally Boag, who set a balloon loose in the middle of the opening remarks, because of course he did. And it was Marty Sklar — a fellow UCLA man — who placed the award in Ron’s hands.

Ron loved being a Disney Legend. He had, after all, been one long before the letter ever came.