So, today on the podcast, we start to look at the final projects of Disney legend Mary Blair,

a person that many believed was Walt's favorite artist.

We're now at the point where Mary is focused on Disney World, largely the mural for the

contemporary hotel, but also on other projects for the resort overall.

And her work on Disney World is set against a very difficult period in her personal life,

with her husband in jail and one of her sons being treated for schizophrenia.

The post-impressionistic painter Vincent Van Gogh once said that art is to console those who are broken by life.

And this statement is at least partially true for Mary,

especially as she moved through her final years.

And with that, let's move into today's episode.

For the first half of 1971, Mary was focused on the mural for the contemporary hotel.

As she was living alone with Donovan in a

treatment center, Kevin Offick College, and Lee in jail, she could focus her energies on her art

and also traveled to Burbank and Glendale as she needed. She also again had a cat, which she

named Ferrari, who kept her company. But then at the start of the

summer, her life again began to change. Kevin returned from Otero College in Colorado. He had graduated,

but not in engineering as he'd hoped. His classes in engineering hadn't gone well. As Kevin put it, I screwed up my first year.

So he left with an associate's degree in the liberal arts. This, he believed, wouldn't help him

much on the job market. But he was happy to come out to his parents' new house in SoCal,

even if Mary was the only one living there at the time. When I came back

from college for the first eight months or so, it was just my mother and me living at the house,

Kevin explained. We were a lot closer than we'd been before. My mother and I developed our own

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