Introduction
Flora Call Disney (April 22, 1868 – November 26, 1938) was the mother of Walt Disney and Roy Disney.
Family
Flora Call Disney was born in Steuben, Ohio, the daughter of Henrietta (née Gross; 1837–1910) and Charles Call (1823–1890), who were neighbors of Kepple Disney, father of her husband. She was of German and English descent.
Disney married Elias Charles Disney on January 1, 1888, in Kismet, Lake County, Florida, and they had five children:
- Herbert Arthur Disney (December 8, 1888–January 29, 1961)
- Raymond Arnold Disney (December 30, 1890–May 24, 1989)
- Roy Oliver Disney (June 24, 1893–December 20, 1971)
- Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901–December 15, 1966)
- Ruth Flora Disney Beecher (December 6, 1903–April 7, 1995)
Death
Disney died in 1938 in an accident that plagued her son Walt Disney with grief for the rest of his life. After the success of their film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1938, Walt Disney and Roy Disney presented their parents with a new home in North Hollywood, nearthe Disney studios in Burbank, California. Less than a month after moving in, Disney complained to her younger sons of problems with the gas furnace in her new home. Studio repairmen were sent to the house, but the problem was not adequately fixed. Disney wrote a letter to her daughter Ruth Disney describing the wonderful new home, but again complaining of the fumes from the furnace. A few days later, Disney died of asphyxiation caused by the fumes at age 70. She is entombed next to her husband in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.