Jack’s Uncle Eben Fiske (Provided photo)

I had three wonderful uncles. There was my Uncle Rad who was a de facto father when I visited my cousins, which I did nearly every summer growing up. There was my Uncle Gus, a creative engineer with several patents to his name and a funny vocabulary to match. He always told us about his latest adventure by saying, “Isn’t that keachy peen?” And then there was Uncle Eben, an Anglican minister living in Pontefract, England.

Uncle Gus was probably my favorite uncle because he had a great sense of adventure and humor, but Uncle Eben may have been the most interesting. Both had convertible sports cars. Uncle Gus raced around Connecticut in his Jaguar XKE and Uncle Eben raced around England in his MGB. My sister tells of his driving frightening her when she visited him in the late sixties. Driving fast was his joie de vivre. He was described by others as quirky, generous and with great pride of his second country, the United Kingdom. He loved to take people out for a good meal, followed by an evening at the local pub.

Uncle Eben didn’t get to this side of the pond too often, but we loved getting our annual Christmas gift from him — a check for $25. That doesn’t sound like much but it’s about 300 bucks in today’s moolah. The Drury kids would make an annual post-Christmas pilgrimage to FAO Schwartz in New York City to spend the gift. But even in the 1950s, $25 didn’t go too far at the high-end toy store, although it probably could have bought half the toys in the Sears and Roebuck Christmas catalog.

It turns out — unbeknownst to me as I wasn’t born yet — that around 1943, Uncle Eben visited my mom when my parents and three oldest siblings lived in Pasadena, California. My uncle had an unusual request that generated a memorable family story. It went something like this: upon his arrival from England, which in those days probably took longer than it does to fly from here to New Zealand does today, my uncle recovered from travel lag (jet lag didn’t exist yet) came downstairs to one of my mother’s grand waffle breakfasts and said, “Have you ever met Walt Disney? I’d like to meet him. What do you say we go over and make a visit?”

“Wouldn’t we all,” my mother said, “Why do you want to meet Walt Disney?”

Uncle Eben said, “In our church cemetery there’s a Disney buried. I wonder if it’s a relative of his. I’d like to find out.”

Although Disneyland didn’t open until 1955 and Disney World in 1971, by 1943 Walt Disney was already world famous. Mickey Mouse had been around since 1928 and the movies “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Pinocchio,” “Fantasia,” “Dumbo” and “Bambi” had made Disney a household name. He had already won numerous Academy Awards and was well on his way to a record 26 Oscars.

My mother said to my uncle, “It’s not that easy. You don’t just go over and drop in.”

Uncle Eben said, “Why not?”

“He’s too famous and busy,” my mother said, “You can’t just knock on the door and join him for a cup of tea. I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that we can get in to see him”

Uncle Eben was persistent, so my mother tracked down the telephone number to Disney Brothers Studios. (In those days you just picked up the phone and asked the operator for their number, it was that easy.) Then she called and asked the receptionist for an appointment to meet Walt Disney fully expecting to be disappointed.

Lo and behold … she wasn’t!

A couple of days later they were in Walt Disney’s office chatting about a cemetery in Merry Olde England. My mother said he was the nicest person and took a sincere interest in my uncle and her. She found him a unique blend of shyness and charm — even self-deprecating. He downplayed his own role in his company’s success. Despite his reserved nature, he exuded a warm and outgoing presence that made her feel welcome and inspired. He embodied the magic he brought to life on the screen.

She got no free passes to Disneyland, nor even tickets to a movie. Just a down-to-earth, friendly and personal conversation with one of the most creative and influential figures of the 20th Century. It was clear from my mother’s retelling of the legend so many times that, thanks to my Uncle Eben, she found the visit with Disney special. It not only generated a great family story, but as a result my mother never turned down a request by us kids to attend a Disney movie. I soon devoured “Old Yeller” and fell in love with Haley Mills in “Pollyanna.”

The family story fails to state whether the person in my uncle’s cemetery was a relative of Walt Disney’s or not. I used my internet sleuthing skills this morning however and found out that indeed, Gervase Disney, a Walt Disney relative, was indeed buried in Pontefract in 1786.