Mickey Mouse Christmas Card, Jamestown, NC
Mickey and Minnie Christmas Wrap, Jamestown, NC
I packed all my earthly belongings in my new car after
graduating from college and moved to the Kansas City area to follow my bliss
for adventure and opportunity in the big city.
One of the first job offers I received was from the headquarters of
Hallmark cards in their operations area.
However, instead of joining the company whose motto was “When you care
enough to send the very best” I opted to join Hercules, a company that was
supporting the Vietnam war effort by sending out our very best helicopter
Mighty Mouse rocket propellants. Nevertheless,
that first real job offer made me a lifelong fan of Hallmark cards. Ironically, I recently sent my new grandson in
Chicago a Hallmark Disney Christmas card with Micky Mouse on the sparkly red
and green cover!
Joyce Hall saw the opportunity in the new postcard craze of
1903 at his family store in Nebraska.
Soon he was producing them and moved his business to Kansas City. By 1915 the Hall Brothers company had
migrated to greeting cards and changed their name to Hallmark in 1928 after the
hallmark symbols used by London goldsmiths.
Walt Disney was born in Chicago in 1901 and his family located
to Kansas City in search of new opportunities in 1911. He and his brother Roy woke up at 4:30 every
morning to deliver the morning Kansas City Times and repeated the exhausting
route after school for the evening Kansas City Star. Walt copied newspaper cartoons and attended
Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute. He worked as an apprentice artist in 1919
drawing commercial illustrations for advertising and theater programs and catalogs. Disney moved to Hollywood, California in 1923
to be with his convalescing brother Roy where they formed Disney Studios. The now infamous cartoon character Micky
Mouse was created in 1928, even though Walt initially named him Mortimer Mouse,
which his wife Lilian considered too pompous and suggested that he be named Mickey
Mouse.
Isn’t it interesting Christmas Karma that both Joyce Hall
and Walt Disney had their roots in Kansas City where my family lived for 25
years, Hallmark and Mickey Mouse were both introduced to the world in the same
year of 1928, and now ninety years later I purchased a Mickey Mouse Hallmark
card for my grandson In Chicago whose father works for Disney?
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