The Life and Art of Dick Kelsey - PART VII

Click the following to read: The Life and Art of Dick Kelsey - PART I, PART II, PART III, PART IV, PART V,  and PART VI

September 12, 1948 newspaper clipping.

        By Melody Time’s release in late May of 1948, Dick Kelsey’s artistic ventures of that year were just beginning. The premiere of Disney’s live-action-and-animated feature So Dear to My Heart was less than a year away, and the Blair, Hench, and Kelsey team were busy developing its cartoon treatment.

        “Walt was always way ahead of us, searching for new procedures, new forms of entertainment,” shared animators Johnston and Thomas. “...One theme that kept haunting him was the story of Hiawatha.”81

Cover of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1890 edition of The Song of Hiawatha.

        One could assume that Disney’s interest in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (1855) began when he was a child growing up in the Midwest. It is possible that Walt's initial exposure to Longfellow's epic poem was found in a reprinted 1890 illustrated edition by Frederic Remington. If this was the case, Remington's romantic paintings no doubt stuck with Walt throughout his career. Like many of the classical stories he admired. In 1937, Disney released a Silly Symphony entitled, Little Hiawatha--an animated short very loosely based on Longfellow’s original work. This cartoon, however, did little to extinguish his interest in the story, and as the years went on, Hiawatha managed to pop up time and time again.

        In a letter from 1944, Disney background artist Holling C. Holling makes reference to preliminary ideas he had for a Hiawatha project. Holling’s ideas, however, dabbled a little too much into the story elements of Snow White, with the inclusion of dwarflike Indian characters with representative personalities.82 In comparison to what Kelsey would eventually plan for the animated feature in late 1948, Holling’s ideas seem juvenile and recycled, and more appropriate for a Silly Symphony plot. Conversely, Dick Kelsey’s attack on the project was seriously driven by creative and stylized conceptual art, not only true to Longfellow’s original story, but backed by an enormous amount of research.

        By September of 1948, Disney decided to move forward with preliminary work on an animated version of Hiawatha, and Dick Kelsey was assigned to head up a team of artists. 83 In a Portland, Maine newspaper article, dated September 12, 1948, columnist Howard C. Heyn wrote, “Dick Kelsey, one of Disney’s chief staff artists, will spend six weeks (starting Sept. 25) touring the Great Lakes Region, sketching and documenting the settings of Longfellow’s famous narrative poem.” 84 Heyne continued, “Kelsey’s will be no easy task in this modern era, since he insists he will try ‘to recapture both the spirit and the look of Hiawatha’s land.’”

Dick and Pauline Kelsey at a New Year's dinner, 1949.

        A November 14, 1948 article from the Santa Barbara News-Press by columnist Litti Paulding added a bit more information about Kelsey’s research many weeks into the process. Within her text, Paulding not only updates the Santa Barbara area about Kelsey’s work on the Hiawatha project, but writes about Pauline Kelsey joining him, and other events that occurred during the husband and wife’s cross-country trip together:

Right back to the original Thanksgiving Day, and beyond it, will be Walt Disney’s forthcoming drama cartoon “Hiawatha.” It will take a number of years in the making. The other day Dick (Richmond) and Pauline Kelsey were telling me all about it in El Presidio. They were just back from a research jaunt to Eastern museums. Dick is one of Disney’s leading staff artists....not only did he sketch costumes....gather customs, but he took pictures of the Eastern and Michigan trees in their autumn coloring....and gathered authentic music....Hiawatha, pronounced High-a-watha, was “E-ah-wat-a” to the Indians. The Kelseys went to Boston to visit Houghton Mifflin, publishers of Dick’s delightful “Gismo....” The Kelseys drove back and forth across continent, missed the rain and loved the trip....they saw the Indian Country in Minnesota and the Chippewas. 85

        The conceptual art that Kelsey personally created for Hiawatha was not only brilliantly depicted, but richly woven with a fantastical mystique. One can only imagine the hundreds of preliminary drawings Kelsey produced for the ill-fated feature, but the examples made available to the public reveal a story grand in scope and brilliant in stylization. 

        Mostly created with a charcoal and pastel medium, one can see what Ron Dias was referring to when he aptly observed Kelsey using his brush like a pencil. Each drawing somehow manages to tell a story, but in an almost poetic way through Kelsey’s use of natural elements and depictions of Native American lore. 

        In one sketch of Hiawatha’s father, Mudjekeewis, the dark shadows of his inset eyes that seem to stare into one’s soul evoke a feeling of power and oneness with nature. The textured hairs of Kelsey’s brush are evident in the way Mudjekeewis’s hair blows with the wind, almost becoming one with the sky. Another drawing of a similar theme depicts Hiawatha standing at the summit of a hill, surrounded by the coldness and harshness of winter. The bitter wind that blows at his back seems to follow his gaze’s path as it descends to the outer edge of a tree-lined forest rich with the colors of autumn. His drawing – much like the one of Hiawatha’s father – has a haunting quality, as if the natural elements from beyond are one with the father and son.

        Another piece worth examining depicts Hiawatha entering his wigwam in the dead of winter, as Kelsey’s white paint applied with dry brush swirls about him. It is a drawing such as this where one can observe the artist’s skill with pastel and a brush. The textural variance between the sky above and the way in which the snow lies below is brilliant. If one looks closely, the bristles of Kelsey’s brush are recognizable in the snow mounds at the base of Hiawatha’s wigwam. Ron Dias attests to the fact that Kelsey even used toothbrushes to achieve specific types of rough and spattered textures on surfaces, and perhaps that’s the exact tool he used when studying the sandy texture of the snow as it lies on the rear of the shelter.

        The element of wind alone seems to play a vital role in Kelsey’s portrayal of the story, and is powerfully personified in his drawing of Kabibonokka - the North Wind. The artist’s texture of swirling wind in bluish-white pastel and spattered white paint is again present as the North Wind streams across the sky, lightning bolt in hand. The contrast between the pastel of the background and the blue paint color of Kabibonokka is striking, and assists in bringing the subject of the drawing to the fore. Subtle touches like the spilling of snow from the spirit’s side pouch, to the stream of swirling wind emitted from the palm of his hand, are cleverly executed and add to the mystique. 

        Kelsey’s interpretation of ghost warriors as seen in the aurora borealis takes on a similar feel to the previous sketch. The shapes of the spirits seem to streak upwards towards the heavens, leaving a white jet stream of dry brush behind in their wake. Fire, as a natural element, glows with intensity against the dark blue of night in several of Kelsey’s drawings, and seems almost alive as its flames fan in the wind. Water becomes a spirit of its own in a particular sketch as its cool colors cascade down a warmly-lit hillside and spill off the edge of a cliff.

        Analysis of each and every one of Kelsey’s Hiawatha sketches could fill a book. Though a major product never materialized from this artistic journey, it doesn’t mean Kelsey’s efforts went unnoticed. According to animation historian Charles Solomon, “On December 8, 1948, the studio held an in-house showing of the artwork for ‘Hiawatha’ and asked the employees to list their reactions on a questionnaire.” One employee wrote, “It would make a wonderful feature, but would it be accepted? By this I mean the heaviness of the subject. Would the people going to see what they feel or expect Disney to bring them accept it?”86 

1948 newspaper clipping.

1948 newspaper clipping.

        The blood, sweat, and tears Kelsey poured into each sketch was recognized and praised by his colleagues, but there was something equally unsettling about the project as a whole. Walt Disney himself seemed puzzled as to how the story would be presented to the public from the very beginning. “There’s something there – something that’s right for us,” Disney once said. “I don’t know what it is or how we’d do it. Don’t think of a film, don’t even think of a show – don’t limit your thinking to a regular theater.”87 As Solomon inferred, many of the artists most likely feared that the Hiawatha project was going to become another Fantasia. Kelsey himself noted:

Walt doesn’t want to make this a light thing...he wants it [to have] a terrific musical accompaniment – almost Christ-like, but not quite...Walt said it was originally his idea to get the storyboards up to show the material we are going to work with, then call in the composer – tell the story like we just told it – let the composer write a suite called “The Hiawatha Suite” – then go back and start working from the composer’s suite.88

        Although story elements were periodically modified and meetings were held to consider the possibilities, the project seemed almost doomed from the beginning. Despite Kelsey’s brilliant studies, the cons weighed heavily against them. It wasn’t just a question of how to properly present the story to the audience, but how to animate it was another beast entirely. The story seemed too broad and larger than anyone could handle, and not to mention didn’t seem all that profitable during a time of much-needed revenue at the studio. Any hope of the story reaching fruition was abandoned in late 1949, and Kelsey’s art with it. Forty-five years later, the fruits of Kelsey’s labor would be uncovered by the creators of Pocahontas (1995), and serve as an inspiration to the film about the Native American princess.

References:

81 Johnston and Thomas, The Illusion of Life, 531.

82 Holling, Holling C., Holling C. Holling to Mother, June 6, 1944. Letter. From Didier Ghez e-mail.

83 Charles Solomon, The Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art from Five Decades of Unproduced Animation, (New York: Hyperion, 1995), 180.

84 Heyn, Howard C. "Famed Longfellow Narrative to be Subject of Cartoon." Portland Sunday Telegram and Sunday Press Herald, September 12, 1948.

85 Paulding, Litti. "An American Holiday and Some Grace Notes "In Puritan Land"." Santa Barbara News-Press, November 14, 1948.

86 Solomon, The Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art from Five Decades of Unproduced Animation, 181.

87 Ibid., 180.

88 Ibid., 182.

The Life and Art of Ron Dias - PART II

Click on the following to read: The Life and Art of Ron Dias - PART I

Honolulu Academy of Arts (1940s). (Postcard from author's private collection)

        On August 9, 1950, thirteen-year-old Ron Dias received publicized recognition of his creative abilities for the first time in The Honolulu Advertiser.  A local radio show for kids conducted a design contest in late July, welcoming children to create a replica of Uncle Sam using a medium of their choosing.  “Replicas of Uncle Sam included cut-out models, drawings, carvings, hand-sewn embroidered designs – even cookies baked in the shape and outline of Uncle Sam.”[1]  The article does not share what Ron specifically created, but he came in third place.  As a result, he earned a prize and got his picture taken with the other winners at the local radio station.

Lino Dias Jr. with his winnings from a design contest, August, 1950.

        As if that date in August 1950 wasn’t special enough, Ron’s father received his own recognition of his artistic abilities two days prior.  The Hawaiian Electric Company was eager to update their company’s emblem and employees were welcomed to submit their own designs as part of a contest.  Lino Dias Jr. submitted his own design and won ten dollars.  Although his design was not chosen, he and a group of fellow employees were pictured with a brief accompanying article in the August 7, 1950 issue of The Honolulu Advertiser.  It must have been a week of celebration at the Dias home.

        In December 1953, Ron Dias’s creativity won his family home local acclaim.  To celebrate the yuletide season, Kailua citizens were welcomed to attend an annual Christmas festival in their community.  For the festival, local businesses and homes were welcomed to take part in an interior decorating competition with a Christmas flair.  Ron put his burgeoning art skills to use and decked the halls of his family home, winning third place in the competition.[2]  His cousin, Bob Artz, shared:

I remember going to their house and seeing…during Christmastime, Ron had painted a Santa Claus on plywood.  A cut-out.  And Santa Claus was in a grass skirt and he had…garland flowers around his head…and he was shirtless, of course, because it was Hawaii…And he had little cut-outs…expertly painted, and this was when he was young…That was their little Christmas display in the yard.[3]   

        Ron Dias’s time at Roosevelt High School in Honolulu was spent finetuning his art skills both day and night, along with singing solos in the school a cappella choir, designing sets for school plays, and doing “artistic work for Kona-TV,” Honolulu’s local TV station of the time.[4]  For the latter, he sketched a cuckoo-clock for an advertisement promoting early morning movies on the channel. 

        Although singing was just as much of a passion for Ron, he dedicated himself to art, thanks largely to his high school art teacher, Armena Eller.  “I have great memories of Mrs. Eller,” he said.  “She was never one to just say ‘we’re going to do pastel today.’”[5]  Under Armena Eller’s tutelage, Ron was assigned nontraditional art assignments, including a project that would change the course of his life.

        Ron enrolled in evening and Saturday classes at the Honolulu Academy of Arts prior to his freshman year in 1952.  He carried his Hawaiian upbringing with a sense of pride, and the Academy provided him a venue in which he could immerse himself completely in a world where culture and art collided.  As shared in a 1954 article of The Honolulu Advertiser: “The academy was founded [in 1927] so that Hawaii’s children of many nationalities and races could receive an intimation of their cultural heritage and receive through the channels of art a deep understanding of Eastern, Western and Polynesian cultures.”[6]  “It opened my eyes to the art world,” Ron said of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.[7]

Ron Dias paints Oh Men! Oh Women! actress, Enid Beaumont, September. 1955. 

        With the refinement of his art skills, Ron was brought on to do work for the Honolulu Community Theater, thanks largely to the recommendation of Roosevelt High’s theater teacher, Grace McAlister.  “She gave so much to the students,” he said of his theater teacher.  With McAlister cheering him on, Ron’s first assignment was to paint a large portrait of the leading actress for the community theater’s production of Oh Men! Oh Women! in September 1955.  Ron’s growing expertise also lent itself to makeup design for high school productions.  Not a strong student academically, Ron exclaimed, “My art saved my ass!”[8]     

        Ron Dias’s four-and-a-half year stretch at the Academy of Art taught him everything he needed to know in attempting to be a fine art painter.  The Honolulu Advertiser wrote in a 1955 article:

An artist of some experience for his age [18], Ronny [sic] has studied art for several years and has had examples of his work on exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and at the Library of Hawaii, Kailua Branch, where he exhibited in a one-man show.[9]

        Ron risked stretching himself too thin upon enrolling in a commercial art correspondence course headquartered on the U.S. east coast.  The Honolulu Academy provided him the opportunity to develop his fine art skills, but he yearned for more.  “The Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut had offered a correspondence course that went on for about three years,” Ron said.[10]  American art historian and lecturer, Rena Tobey, wrote:

In 1948, charismatic illustrator Albert Dorne had an idea. He approached America’s most famous working illustrator, Norman Rockwell (known for his idealized depictions of American life on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post), about creating a correspondence school for commercial art, full of tips, methods, and case studies to appeal to those who dreamed of becoming an artist.[11]

         Ron described:

Well, it started with four big books.  It was a red book, a yellow book, a blue book, and a gray book.  And, each book was another level.  And, you started very, very simply; doing very simple assignments and normally [in] gouache and black and white – nothing in color – you graduated to color later.  And just teaching you all of the fundamentals of how to approach a professional job; how to do it like the professionals do it.[12] 

        Upon completing assignments within each designated book, Ron mailed them east to Connecticut to be graded.  He continued:

That was very, very difficult to get through that because you never saw a person.  You never talked to a person.  And I know that it wasn’t always Norman Rockwell who was correcting your paper because you would have the name of the person who was correcting your paper and showing you where you had gone wrong and if your perspective was off.  That’s another thing too – I didn’t understand perspective and I knew that I was going to need that heavily if I was going to be getting into illustrative work.[13]    

        It is certain Norman Rockwell wasn’t grading Ron’s work in the fall of 1955.  As shared in an October 28 column of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin: “Mr. Rockwell is currently winding up a tour around the world in 60 days, making sketches for a series of Pan American Airway ads.”[14]  Rockwell’s publicized arrival in Honolulu on October 24 provided a rare opportunity for Ron Dias to meet the famous artist.  Hawaiian articles mentioned Rockwell’s Famous Artists School in Connecticut and “several…students who now live in the Islands” expected “to see Rockwell during his visit.”[15]  These Famous Artists School students got their chance, and Ron was included in the small group. 

Norman Rockwell with Ron Dias, October 1955.

Paradise of the Pacific magazine clipping.

        Around the time of Norman Rockwell’s visit to Oahu in the fall of 1955, Ron’s high school art teacher, Armena Eller, informed him of a national stamp design contest.  “She’d go out and she’d find commercial projects…for us to do as class projects,” he said of his teacher.[16]  Eller challenged her students to take part in this unique opportunity.  Contestants were tasked with creating a stamp design “of any one color or black and white measuring 7 by 12 inches” that focused on promoting friendship among children all over the world.[17]  In 1956, Morris C. Rothblum of the Courier-Post out of Camden, New Jersey wrote:

The national stamp competition was conducted between September 9, 1955 and March 10, 1956, through cooperative efforts of the United States Office of Education and the Council of Chief State School Officers, an organization of official heads of school systems in states, territories, and possessions, with headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The moving force behind the Children’s Stamp idea is Lady Hilda Butterfield of New York City, who, in her capacity as a private citizen, has fostered the children’s stamp in several countries, including the United States, in the interest of international friendship.[18]

         “I didn’t know what I was going to do with this thing,” Ron said of the stamp design.  “I knew nothing of stamps.”[19]  Upon reflection in his elderly years, he shared:

We had such a melting pot of people [in Hawaii].  I didn’t know what this prejudice stuff was.  I never really knew it existed…Maybe that’s what set me off with the stamp.  With the body of kids down there being all of the different nationalities…and learning and being together facing the world in friendship.[20]

         “Friendship – the Key to World Peace” was the slogan used to accompany Ron’s stamp design.  Ron felt using a key in the design would be a suitable choice, so he decided to depict one radiating light on a group of young faces from all over the world.  As for his artistic approach, he explained:

What people don’t realize [is] there were two designs.  The first one was a pencil sketch; a very tight pencil sketch.  And that was sent in and that was the one that was really okayed, but there was another, that I still have, [that] was given back to me.  The pencil sketch they kept.  The other one, which was a painting of the stamp, I still have ‘til today.[21]     

        For the painted version, Ron used tempera paint in green values.  He said it was a “very difficult medium to handle because you couldn’t blend with it too much unless you were using it more as a watercolor.”  Ron continued:

…I was teaching myself how to do drybrush and how to do stippling and how to do different things to get the…like the sky, I didn’t do in a watercolor wash, I did in a stippling technique, which was like…a brush that you cut way down where the bristles are very short [and] you stipple it on…So I was trying a whole bunch of different techniques I had never tried before, too, on this stamp illustration that wasn’t very big.  So, it was kind of confining to be trying to do something on a smaller scale.[22]

Ron Dias holding the pencil sketch version of his stamp design which was submitted to the national contest for initial approval, circa. 1955. (Ron Dias’s personal collection)

         Ron Dias submitted his pencil and painted designs sometime in the fall of 1955.  He began getting word of his placement in the contest by Christmastime of that year.  “I started getting these letters,” Ron said of the placement notifications he received in the mail.[23]  The December 15, 1955 issue of The Honolulu Advertiser posted:

Ronald Dias, Roosevelt senior, was chosen territorial winner of the postage stamp designing contest sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, D.C.

His design is now in Washington, D.C., for further judging and is based on the theme of “Friendship is the key to peace.”  It pictures a key in the upper right shedding rays of light on children of the world set against a cloudy sky.  It was designed for the United States three cent postage and was painted in shades of green.[24] 

As placement notifications trickled in, Ron’s busy high school life continued.  At the time same, he began writing letters to the Walt Disney Studio inquiring about employment requirements.  “Every letter was answered by a different person,” he recalled, and the fact that he got responses at all was a thrill for him.[25]

        Submissions for the national stamp contest closed on March 10, 1956.  Children’s Stamp expert, Kerry Heffner, stated, “March 15, 1956 was the day they picked the winner.”[26]  The following article was published in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin two days later (the article mistakenly lauds the contest as an international affair):

Ronald Dias, Roosevelt High School senior, was tongue-tied with delight today when he learned that he had won an international [sic] contest with his design for a United States three-cent postage stamp.

“Oh gosh.  I’m tickled,” he said when the Star-Bulletin informed him of his world [sic] championship.[27]

         The article continued: “If Postmaster General [Arthur] Summerfield approves his design, it will be used on a special children’s friendship stamp, the Associated Press reported from Washington.”  The article closed with: “The thrilled high school artist said he hopes to work for Walt Disney in California after his graduation this summer.  He said he has written to Disney who has given him encouragement toward an art career.”[28]  Around the same time, Dias shared with The Honolulu Advertiser: “As far back as I can think I’ve always wanted to work at the Walt Disney studios.”[29]  “They were very proud of him,” Bob Artz said of Ron’s parents.  “They were very excited for him when he won the stamp competition…It was lifechanging…for all of them.”[30]

        Artz’s describing this event as “lifechanging” is an apt one, and perhaps the reason the Dias’s put their property at 137 Kapaa Street in Kailua up for sale as early as February 1956.  Lino and Eva Dias had poured a lot of money into their son’s art education by that point, and given his sound art skills and correspondence with the Walt Disney Studio, along with his climbing placement in a national stamp design competition, it’s safe to assume that they were prepared to move in exchange for their son’s dream coming true.

        Ron finished out the remainder of his 1956 senior year at Roosevelt High with no word as to whether his stamp design was accepted for printing by the Postmaster General.  He once said:

I didn’t have a very fun high school life…Most kids were…out there having a lot of fun and I was bogged down, but I’m kinda [sic] glad now that it worked out that way because I was ready for a lot of things when they came my way.[31] 

        Ron Dias’s favorite place to collect his thoughts was in the Oriental Court of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.  There he would recharge and lightly sketch for pleasure on a concrete bench that reminded him very much of the one the Fairy Godmother sat upon in Cinderella.  Across the way came the gentle din of water cascading from the mouth of a Chinese dragon fixture.  When the timing was right, he captured this place of solitude in a painting.  It wasn’t so much important to him that it won an award, but that it was the first piece that he was proud of.  He never got the painting back, but the feelings that little court evoked never left him.

References

1. “Uncle Sam Contest Winners Will Get Bob Jensen Prizes.” The Honolulu Advertiser, August 9, 1950.

2. “3,000 at Kailua Christmas Festival In Banyan Triangle.”  Honolulu Star-Bulletin, December 23, 1953.

  

3. Bob Artz, Interview by Vincent Randle, February 25, 2018.

4. “Isle Boy’s Stamp Design Wins International Prize.” The Honolulu Advertiser, March 17, 1956.

5. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

6. “Art Academy Milestone.” The Honolulu Advertiser, April 8, 1954.

7. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 15, 2012.

8. Ibid.  

9. “HCT Comedy Opens Tonight.” The Honolulu Advertiser, September 1, 1955.

10. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 15, 2012.

11. Rena Tobey, “Instruction by Mail:  The Famous Artists School,” Connecticut History.org, accessed January 6, 2019, https://connecticuthistory.org/instruction-by-mail-the-famous-artists-school/.

12. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 15, 2012.

13. Ibid.

14. Black, Cobey. “Art With a Heart.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, October 28, 1955.

15. “Thomas E. Dewey, Norman Rockwell Are Due Tonight.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, October 24, 1955.

16. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 15, 2012.

17. “Contest Slated For Designing Children’s Stamp.” Great Falls Tribune, September 20, 1955.

18. Rothblum, Morris C. “Stamps.” Courier-Post, September 27, 1956.

19. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 15, 2012.

20. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

21. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 15, 2012.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. “Ronald Dias Wins Design Contest.” The Honolulu Advertiser, December 15, 1955.

25. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

26. Kerry Heffner, Interview by Vincent Randle, January 21, 2019.

27. “U.S. May use Postal Design Of Youthful Island Artist.”  Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 16, 1956.

28. Ibid.

29. “Isle Boy’s Stamp Design Wins International Prize.” The Honolulu Advertiser, March 17, 1956.

30. Bob Artz, Interview by Vincent Randle, February 25, 2018.

31. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 15, 2012.

The Life and Art of Ron Dias - PART I

         “I was raised and born in paradise.”  These were the words Ron Dias used to describe his upbringing on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.  “I didn’t wear shoes ‘til I went to high school.  I was sifting in sand, swimming in the blue Pacific Ocean, and just having a blast!”[1]  By the time he was born in 1937, Ron Dias’s family was firmly planted in the Hawaiian sands. 

        Ron Dias’s lineage begins in Portugal.  Ron said his paternal family “sailed around the cape and settled in Lahaina, Maui.”[2]  Census reports reveal that Ron’s paternal grandfather, Lino Dias Sr. (1876-1952) married Maria Cordeiro (1877-1946) of Portugal and together they had seven children, including Ron’s father, Lino Dias Jr., born on August 5, 1906.[i]  The Dias family hopped from one Hawaiian island to the next throughout the first quarter of the 20^th century.  As of 1900, they resided on the northern coast of Big Island where Lino Dias Sr. worked as a laborer on a plantation as late as 1912.[3]  By 1920, the large Dias family was settled in Honolulu on the island of Oahu.[4]  From 1920 on, Lino Dias Senior’s work ranged from a janitor to a theater manager to a painter while his wife, Maria, remained home to raise their children.

Lino Dias Senior (1876-1952) holding his grandson Ronald Dias.  (Courtesy of Stephen Dias)

Maria “Mary” Codeiro (1877-1946). (Courtesy of Stephen Dias)

        In 1926, at the age of twenty, Lino Dias Jr. was listed in the Honolulu city directory as a “helper” at the Hawaiian Electric Company.  He would remain in the electrical business in and around Honolulu until the 1950s.  Three years later, in June of 1929, Lino Dias Jr. would go on to marry a certain Eva Ferreira of Honolulu.      

        Ron Dias’s mother, Eva Ferreira, was born on November 22, 1913 to Manuel Ferreira (1874-1962) and Carolina de Freitas (1876-1923), both of Portugal.[i]  They would have twelve children together.  Manuel Ferreira “was in the dairy business,” according to Ron.  “All of the kids had specific jobs to do.  My mom did the laundry for all the workers…down on the river on the rocks.”  Manuel and Carolina Ferreira’s marriage was a volatile one. 

Carolina de Freitas (1876-1923).  (Courtesy of Bob Artz)

        The children suffered the brunt of their father’s frivolities, which Ron’s mother recounted to her son many years later.  Manuel Ferreira would “put a lock on the refrigerator…and nobody used that refrigerator unless he was there,” Ron shared.  “So what one of the brothers did…[was] broke the lock…to feed the younger kids.”[5]  The marriage ended in divorce in 1922, and unfortunately Carolina “Carrie” Ferreira would die of illness a year later at the age of 47.[6]  Fortunately, Eva Ferreira left these troubles behind upon marrying Lino Dias Jr. in 1929, but she remained close with several of her siblings which led to wonderful childhood memories for her future son, Ronald.

        Ronald Lionel Dias was born in Kapiolani Maternity Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii on February 15, 1937 to Lino and Eva Dias, who affectionately referred to him as Ronnie.  A daughter, Yvonne Joyce Dias, would come along three years later on October 20, 1940. 

        Lino Dias Jr. provided for his family as an employee of the Hawaiian Electric Company, but on the side, he played the ukulele, dabbled in art, and was a great admirer of the Tarzan and Prince Valiant comic strips of his time.  “My dad could’ve…been an artist,” Ron shared.  “I swear, he could draw…Tarzan just like the comic strips.”  He continued:

He was just terrific with pen and ink and he would do the most wonderful drawings and wonderful sketches and I have a feeling that must have been a big pull for my, you know, starting to wanna [sic] be an artist…There wasn’t anything [he couldn’t do].  He could’ve been a carpenter.  Some of the most beautiful carpentry stuff and carving that he did.  And I often wonder what it would have been like he if he had picked something that was more in the art, or toward the art world what would’ve happened for him.[7]

Eva Dias doing the hula (Courtesy of Stephen Dias)  

Lino and Eva Dias, 1953.  (Courtesy of Stephen Dias)

        Ron was also exposed to his mother’s love of art through song and dance.  “She had a wonderful voice,” he said.  “She would love to sing and she could dance the hula like crazy.  I remember my dad used to grab the…ukulele and he used to play and she would dance.”[8]  Eva Dias’s love for song and dance rubbed off on her son, and music would remain an important part of his life.  Ron Dias’s second birthday was celebrated in the local newspaper with a picture of him.  The caption text beneath described him as “quite an accomplished dancer and singer.”[9]  Ron’s love for singing stuck with him into adulthood.

        “I stuttered.  I stuttered terribly,” Ron shared.  “My mom blames the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941…because she said I was fine up until then.”  The Dias home looked down on the harbor, and according to Ron, they “saw the kamikazes” along with the flames and clouds of smoke that billowed into the Hawaiian sky.[10]  Safety measures on the island called for civilian blackouts in the event of another Japanese aerial attack, and these silent moments in the dark terrified Ron. Overtime, Ron developed coping strategies to combat his stuttering. 

Ron and Yvonne Dias, circa 1942. 
(Courtesy of Bob Artz)

        Finding Honolulu to be riddled with tourists, Lino Dias Jr. decided to move his family thirteen miles northeast to a plot of land in Kailua, Hawaii in the mid-1940s.  One of Ron Dias’s last and fondest memories of living in Honolulu was seeing a reissue of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) at six-years-old at the Kuhio Theater.  “I saw it, and I was just overwhelmed by it,” Ron recalled.  “I just could not believe that drawings and paintings and all that could give you so much emotion…could be so warm, so real to you!” [11]  It was in that Honolulu theater where a dream was born.  Shortly after, Ron Dias moved from Honolulu, taking his dream of working for Walt Disney someday with him.

        Lino Dias Jr. built a home for his family on their newly acquired land in Kailua, but all didn’t initially go as planned.  Ron explained:

…He purchased this acre of land…that was not built up yet.  In fact, in blocks, there was only one house and then another house and we were like the third house in this big, big area…In the middle of this property, he and my…Uncle John…built a small, little house…but what he [Lino Dias Jr.] didn’t realize…[was] my sister, Yvonne, and myself, would be growing so rapidly that this little house…was too small…So, he picked up this house, moved it way to the back…and started renting that out mainly to army couples…because we were very close to the Kaneohe naval air base.[12]     

         Lino Dias Jr. then built a larger three-bedroom house at the front of the property, now giving his children plenty of room to grow and play.  Even better, the house was less than two blocks from the local beach club, providing the Dias children ample opportunities to sift in the sands of Kalama Beach and swim in the Pacific Ocean.  “That was heaven for us!” Ron exclaimed.[13] 

        Bob Artz, Ron’s cousin on his mother’s side, shared, “Aunt Eva and Uncle Lionel…were like…the favorite aunt and uncle.  They’re the ones you’d love to go visit and they’re always making cookies or something, but Aunt Eva was always making guava jam…They had guava trees in their yard.”[14]

        Ron Dias’s personal stories of growing up in Hawaii knew no bounds, and he was always delighted to regale them to anyone who’d listen.  One of his favorites was about the time he lost his swimming trunks in the warm waters off Kalama Beach.  All day he waded in the Pacific, strategizing his escape after sunset.  When darkness settled on Kailua, Ron fled from the waters, scampering from hedge to hedge, until he safely made it back to his home on nearby Kapaa Street.  His parents were worried sick, but delighted to see their nude son.[15]

        In February 1954, American actress and singer, Ethel Merman, came to the island of Oahu for a much-needed vacation.  The event was publicized in the Honolulu-Star Bulletin despite Merman’s insistence on privacy.  Her family was offered a home in Kailua to stay for three weeks.  Ron and his sister, Yvonne, gathered flowers, made them into a lei, and decided to hand deliver it to the famous performer.  As he recounted to his second spouse, Howard Blair, Ron and his sister found out where Merman was staying, knocked on the door, and was greeted with a “Who is it?!” reminiscent of Merman’s loud, abrasive performance from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).  Merman approached from a side gate that led to the home’s pool.  She was wearing a white full-piece bathing suit and beamed upon seeing the two Dias children holding out the lei for her.  “Oh, how nice!” she shrilled while they placed it around her neck.[16]           

Ron and Yvonne Dias (mid-1940s) in their
Kailua, Hawaii home.
(Courtesy of Stephen Dias)

        “She was a stinker at times,” Ron lovingly recalled of his sister, Yvonne.  Ron described himself as the “teddy tidy” type where his sister was messy with her belongings and demanded lots of attention.  Ron and Yvonne Dias were lucky enough to have their own bedrooms, and for Ron Dias, his bedroom became his “laughing place.” He recalled his mother saying, “Your room is your castle, and as long as you keep it clean…I won’t go in there.”[17] 

        Ron Dias spent much of his childhood playing by himself in his bedroom, tapping into his dreams to create a secret world of magic and wonder.  “I liked to decorate…I liked to paint walls,” he said with a laugh.[18]  Thanks largely to Lino Dias Jr.’s carpentry skills, and that the electrical company he worked for sold Lionel trains, little Ronnie’s bedroom became his very own wonderland.

        His father constructed a U-shaped train table that took up almost half the room, laid the track, and his son took over the rest.  When Ron got tired of the train setup, he converted the table layout into a space theme upon discovering the art of Chesley Bonestell on covers of Collier’s in the early 1950s.  Always supportive of Ron’s creativity, his parents permitted him to paint his walls black to resemble deep space.  Dangling from his ceiling were planets, rockets, and space stations.  Ron’s concept of scale began with an early interest in constructing model ships.  “I remember putting the Normandy together that was right down to the little flathead pins for the railings,” he recalled.  His sense of scale was applied to every transformation his room took on.[19]       

        Ron Dias finished the 1940s out with new viewings of Disney films.  Walt Disney’s postwar packaged features, Make Mine Music (1946) and Melody Time (1948), further enhanced his desire to work for the studio one day.  Unlike Snow White, these films did not present a single story, but rather many in one.  Melody Time was especially unique in its incorporation of the unique stylizations of Disney artists, Mary Blair (1911-1978) and Richmond Kelsey (1905-1987).  If only young Ron knew the impact Kelsey would have on him someday. 

        The Walt Disney Parade was a collection of illustrated Disney stories published in 1940 that Ron’s neighbor happened to have.  Whenever he had the chance, he’d run to their house to immerse himself in the book’s illustrations.  Conceptual art created by Swedish-American artist, Gustaf Tenggren (1896-1970), for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was included in this book.  It was Ron’s first introduction to Tenggren’s work.  “And I just loved it,” he said.  “I didn’t realize that I was being, way back then, influenced by a person who I didn’t even know…[their] name.”  Ron recalled his disturbance upon seeing his neighbor color in the book with crayons.  Recognizing that Ron loved the book so much, the neighbor’s father gifted it to him.  Battered and beaten over the years, the spine of The Walt Disney Parade was repaired and remained an important part of Ron Dias’s book collection to the very end. [20]

        Once the art of Disney was firmly planted within Ron Dias, he couldn’t get enough.  A desk area adjacent to his outer space world in his bedroom was no longer for homework, but became Neverland after his viewing of Disney’s Peter Pan (1953).  With the excitement growing around Walt Disney’s publicized construction of Disneyland from 1954 to 1955, Ron reinstalled his trainset and created his own Disneyland.  Bob Artz fondly recalled his Hawaiian cousin’s enchanted world:

The thing that was unique about the train table is it was all Disney.  One end of it was Never-Neverland and he had the ocean and he had the islands all set up with Skull Rock, and everything, which as I recall…he had done with plaster of Paris over a lightbulb…[and] painted it.  He had clouds suspended from the ceiling around the island with fishing line…and then the train went around to Dumbo and the circus and he had all of the little buildings, the characters, the trees…the ladder that Dumbo jumped off.  The whole bit!  Then it went into Alice in Wonderland and you can imagine all the little buildings and stuff and the characters, and it ended up with Snow White with all the seven dwarfs on the other end…The train went through a tunnel, which was the mine that the dwarfs were working at and, you know, every little piece…was done with such care and accuracy and you’d swear he went and bought [them] from the Disney store but there weren’t any such thing at the time.[21]

        Ron Dias’s love for Disney was even channeled beyond his bedroom.  “He would paint the lampshades in the house with Disney themes,” Artz shared.  As a child, Bob Artz recognized in his older cousin that Disney was a true passion.  “Everything else that he did was Disney, Disney!” Artz said.  “He would watch so much of it and copy it so much that it was part of him.”[22]  “I always seemed to be having some new Disney thing that I’d be looking at and being enthused with, you know, and wanting to take another step forward just sketching or drawing,” Ron said himself.[23]  His step forward began with serious art training in the early 1950s.    

Click HERE to read PART II

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[1] Ron Dias, interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Inter-Island.” The Hawaiian Star, May 6, 1912.

[4] Fourteenth Census of the United States:  1920 (Hawaiian territory)

[5] Ron Dias, interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

[6] “Obituaries.”  The Honolulu Advertiser, February 4, 1923.

[7] Ron Dias, interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

[8] Ibid.

[9] “Dancer-Singer.” The Honolulu Advertiser, March 12, 1939.

[10] Ron Dias, interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Bob Artz, Interview by Vincent Randle, February 25, 2018.

[15] Ron Dias, interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

[16] Howard Blair, Phone conversation with Vincent Randle, February 20, 2019.

[17] Ron Dias, interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ron Dias, interview by Vincent Randle, January 29, 2011.

[21] Bob Artz, Interview by Vincent Randle, February 25, 2018.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 8, 2012.

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[i] Ron Dias’s father’s birthname was Lino as confirmed by Stephen Dias, however, the name Lionel would appear on censuses as of 1940.  Lionel became Ron Dias’s middle name.

[ii] Existing evidence reveals that Carolina de Freitas may have been born in the West Indies.  Ron Dias’s son, Stephen Dias, shared, “Her family was from Madeira (Portugal), although she was supposedly born in Jamaica.”