In 2005 the Board of Directors of The Walt Disney Co. summarily dismissed Comcast’s $66 billion acquisition offer as grossly inadequate. Even Ripley’s Believe it or Not would have found it difficult to imagine that one of the world’s most valuable, enduring and endearing companies, an organization with 133,000 employees, sales in excess of $35 billion, and assets of $61 billion started with a pencil, paper, cartoon and a young man’s imagination.

Perhaps only that young man, Walter Elias Disney, could have foreseen such a colossal empire, owner of major parks and resorts; motion picture production and distribution companies including PIXAR and Touchstone; and broadcast, cable, and satellite television and radio stations including ABC, ESPN, E!, and A&E—all built on a mouse.

Like so many of the great moguls, Disney was a very complex man, imbued with an iron-like drive to succeed. A man of persistence and perseverance, he would push, prod and press those around him as he would himself. It wasn’t gentle, and it wasn’t always nice. Yet he had an innocent, almost childlike reverence for fun and games, trains and toys.