Ron Dias was an animation artist for Disney and several other companies. He got his big break by winning a national art contest sponsored by the U S Postal Office and the U S Office of Education. It was for designing a stamp called Friendship is the Key to World Peace. He was a teenager living at home in Hawaii and was awakened at 9 PM and told he was the national winner. He ended up going to Washington DC and even met President Eisenhower. He also got a call from the Walt Disney Studios and wound up getting a job in the animation department at the age of 19. His first job was as an “inbetweener”, which means that he would draw the sequences between pieces of artwork that would give them a natural flow on film. His animator just happened to be Marc Davis and his main character was Aurora, the Princess in Sleeping Beauty. He also got to help with scenes with Maleficent when the entire Maleficent crew got the flu! He worked his way up the ladder at Disney and eventually got to work on background art, which was his passion.
In the 90’s I was the person at Golden Books that handled all illustrator and author orders. If any of those talented people wanted copies of the books that they wrote or illustrated they would order them from me. I got to meet a lot of very talented people through this part of my job. My favorite guy was Ron Dias. He was funny and always had time to talk about his exploits, especially at Disney. He used to do a lot of book signings and ordered all his Little Golden Books from me. Through the years until his death in 2013 he signed a number of books, cards, prints, and original artwork for me. My family has a cabin in northern Wisconsin and he took a picture I sent him of this cabin, filled it in with several Disney characters, and sent it back. My second daughter’s favorite Disney movie was Sleeping Beauty and for her marriage he did a special drawing of the castle and the Prince and Princess for their wedding. Incredibly special.
Ron was taken from us far too soon. He was just getting into several special projects and was doing a lot of his own special paintings with incredibly beautiful backgrounds when he left us. I call him my friend and still miss the fun chats we used to have. The picture shows the kind of thing he would sign for people at his showings- and from his favorite and first Disney movie.
