The Mouse’s Biggest Booster

Nobody is more thrilled about the new Disney show at the Autry than Jay Aldrich, the museum’s manager of public relations and tourism.

He’s the one in the Mickey Mouse tie (he has 150 of them), and the show was his idea.

The owner of one of the largest Mickey Mouse collections in the country, Aldrich, 52, recalls how he got bitten by the mouse. First, there were Mickey Mouse cartoons, which he saw growing up in tiny Tully, N.Y., “pop. 60, probably.” Aldrich would go up to the attic and try to re-create Disney’s magic on the back of old wallpaper rolls. Then came the “The Mickey Mouse Club.” Aldrich talks about Cubby, Darlene and the other regulars as if they were old friends. Plans for a reunion of the original Mouseketeers are being finalized for some time in July, and Aldrich can’t wait. “I’m going to meet personally the idols I grew up with,” he says.

Needless to say, Aldrich wanted to be a Disney artist. But other career opportunities came along. A graduate of Syracuse University, he was a medical illustrator for a time, listening to autopsy tapes and drawing what he heard (the worst, he says). He worked in spacecraft recovery operations. He had a memorable job at the New England Aquarium in Boston that allowed him to dive with the charismatic seal who was the model for Andre. He did guest relations for NBC Studios.

Not a day goes by that Aldrich doesn’t wear a tie, a watch, boxer shorts, something, with Mickey’s visage on it. His collection of Mouse-iana includes more than 8,000 items. That’s despite the fact that “my beautiful porcelain figures and Mickey crystal and plates were lost in the quake.”

As his collection grows, Aldrich finds himself becoming more and more specialized. He now buys only the finest items he can afford, and he tends to choose pieces in which Mickey is associated with something Western.

And, no, he is never tempted by Goofy or other Disney characters. His heart belongs to Mickey.

“When I get a Minnie, it goes in the trash!”

Just kidding, Minnie.