CHARLES RIDGWAY, A Disney Legend

   

         Writer, reporter, editor, photographer and nationally known publicist Charles Ridgway, recognized by the Walt Disney Co. as a “Disney Legend,” made his first “visit” to Disneyland three months before its opening in 1955 when he "sneaked" a six-year-old neighbor boy under the construction fence for a feature story in the Los Angeles Mirror-News, recounting a sneak-peak with pictures into what was then known as “Walt’s Folly.”  Eight year’s later he signed on as a Disneyland publicist and spent the next 40 years cooking up ways to get free publicity for the “Mouse Houses.”  For Donald Duck’s 50th birthday, for instance, he trained 50 Peking ducks to follow the irascible cartoon star in a daily parade through the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom.  He helped open seven Disney parks in Orlando, Anaheim, Paris and Hong Kong, rubbed shoulders with presidents, princes and show-business stars and helped usher in a new era of live electronic coverage staging huge press gatherings for the grand openings of parks, attractions, hotels and recreation venues.  He is on a first-name basis with famous editors and journalists from around the world. 

        Now retired, Ridgway continues to travel extensively photographing wherever he goes including trips in the past three years to Europe, China and South Africa.

 

            CHARLES RIDGWAY, son of the nation’s first Agriculture Editor (for the Chicago Tribune) was born in 1923 in Chicago, Ill., attended schools in Evanston and in Washington, D.C., and with his father became a not-so-gentlemanly farmer plowing and harvesting at age 15, when they moved to a 300-acre corn, wheat and livestock farm near the tiny town of Shelbina, in northeast Missouri.  After three semesters at the University of Missouri, Ridgway joined the U.S. Army for the next two years ending up as a Tech 5 with the 13th Armored Division Field Artillery in battles through France and Germany.  Returning to Mizzou, Charlie helped edit the Missouri Student newspaper and a weekly local radio show, and became president of the student body before graduation from the MU School of Journalism. 

       While working on his first job as a reporter at the nation’s third oldest radio station in Central Illinois, Ridgway married his college sweetheart who had served with him on the Mizzou Student Council.   He soon moved on to an NBC affiliate in Erie, Pa., as a radio newsman, also writing a daily 15-minute western serial show called the “Ghost Rider.”   Then came a year on the night beat at the Erie Dispatch, before moving to California and a reporter’s job on The Los Angeles Mirror News beginning in 1952.  Charlie and wife, Gretta, chose the sleepy little town of Anaheim (pop. 19,000) for their new home, never guessing its proximity to the future site of Disneyland would turn their lives and the world of outdoor entertainment upside down.  Daughter Janet and Son Scott, at ages six and five were thrilled in 1963 when Dad began work at their favorite place in the world.  They soon became unpaid models for publicity pictures which Ridgway.s department distributed to newspapers and magazines across the nation.  Both children helped pay their way through college working at Walt Disney World in Florida where the family moved in 1970 during the construction of Walt Disney World.. 

      As manager and then director of publicity, Ridgway traveled throughout the United States, worked closely with top travel writers, magazine editors and television newsmen, helping make Disney Parks in Anaheim and Florida the best known tourist destinations in America and, in fact, the entire world.  He helped open the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney-MGM Studios, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Downtown Disney, Typhoon Lagoon Blizzard Beach, the City of Celebration, six major golf courses and at least 25 Disney resort hotels.   He spent a year in France as Publicity Director for Disneyland Paris Resort during its construction helping make it the most popular tourist attraction in Europe. He oversaw publicity photography and writing of basic press materials for all of those projects plus media guide books for Disney's California Adventure Park in Anaheim in 2001 and the newest Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005. Those years are detailed in Ridgway's new book, "Spinning Disney's       World" published by The Intrepid Traveler in the Spring of 2007.

     Ridgway lives in Longwood, Fl., where he makes travel-writing and digital photography a full-time avocation with time for golf twice weekly when he is home. (The photo at left was taken during his most recent excursion to Jackson Hole Wyoming.  His pictures of a 300-head herd of Buffalo at the foot of the Grand Teton Mountains can be seen in the Western U.S. Gallery on this website.  He is currently traveling in Chile with the Society of American Travel Writers.)