Key Disneyland Executive Will Retire in August : Business: Ronald K. Dominguez started his career as a ticket taker. His family home was where park now stands.

Ronald K. Dominguez, who climbed the ranks over 39 years from Disneyland ticket taker on opening day to one of the park’s most visible top executives, said Thursday that he plans to retire Aug. 31.

By retiring, Dominguez will become the third leading executive to leave the forefront of the $3-billion Disneyland Resort project. Dominguez, executive vice president in Disney’s West Coast attraction’s division, has been the company’s primary liaison in building support for the project in the Anaheim community.

He follows Disneyland President Jack Lindquist, who retired in November, and project director Kerry Hunnewell, whose departure was announced in December.

But Dominguez, 58, said his leaving had nothing to do with the project, and that he plans to remain in Orange County and continue his community work.

“I will be available for any support I can give on that project,” Dominguez said. “We have reached a point where we can bring this to a conclusion sometime this year.”

With City Council approval expected over the summer on the financial arrangement between the city and Disney, the company will be able to decide by the end of the year whether it wants to build the massive theme park called Westcot and 5,000 hotel rooms around Disneyland.

Dominguez’s photo has appeared in newsletters sent to Anaheim residents about the project, and he often is seen at charitable and other events throughout Orange County. He has appeared in Spanish language television commercials for Disneyland, even though he concedes he is not fluent in Spanish.

He said he plans to travel and relax as a retiree.

“While I’m in good health, I want to enjoy life,” he said.

He is a descendant of the pioneer Yorba family, whose family had sold off its part of the old Spanish land grant over the years, leaving them with a 10-acre grove where Disneyland now stands. The Dominguez home was on the present site of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Dominguez went to work at Disneyland as a 19-year-old, collecting tickets on the problem-plagued opening day in July, 1955. He later dressed up as frontiersman Davy Crockett at the park when actor Fess Parker had the TV show of the same name.

“Davy Crockett was at the peak of stardom,” he said. “I could hardly walk through the park” without being mobbed by boys in coonskin caps.

He started moving through the management ranks at the park within a year. He became director of the operations in 1970 and vice president of the Disneyland division in 1974.

Dominguez, a Villa Park resident, became an executive vice president 10 years later, and when Disney acquired the Queen Mary in Long Beach in 1988, he took charge of it as well. When Lindquist retired, his duties were split between Dominguez and another executive, Norman Doerges.

Some city officials said Dominguez’s departure marks the loss of yet another veteran at a park that nurtured long-term relationships with the city over the years.

“Disney in the last year has lost several people that I have had very high regard for,” Councilman Irv Pickler said. “They are going to be sorely missed.”