Pioneer Disney Trainer Dies

Van Arsdale France, the man who put the smile on the faces that greet visitors to Disneyland, died of pneumonia Wednesday at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach. He was 87.

France, a former industrial labor relations expert, founded the University of Disneyland training center in the months before the theme park opened in 1955 in Anaheim. He went on to spend more than a quarter-century devising Disneyland training programs.

His diminutive stature and large role as the trainer of the public faces of the park led colleagues to describe him as the Jiminy Cricket of Disneyland.

Over the years, hundreds of thousands of Disney workers went through the training programs, a key step in establishing the Disney business theme of customers as guests and happiness as a product.

“He believed that the best thing about Disneyland was the people,” said Dave Koenig, author of three books about the inner workings of the self-styled Happiest Place on Earth. “Disneyland wants so much to identify itself as a magical place with the attractions and the characters. For him, it was the people.”

Those people have included author and entertainer Steve Martin, who started at the Main Street Magic Shop, and former Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler, who worked the Jungle Cruise.

But France, who once wrote a memoir for The Times, was just as proud of the trainees who stayed with Disney.

“He had a great insight for looking for success within people,” said Bill Ross, Disneyland vice president for public affairs. Ross went through France’s training program 25 years ago before assuming his job operating the Skyways attraction. “It didn’t matter if that success was within the organization or moving into a new career or just in staying as a mechanic. He had the ability to reinforce that sense of success in everyone.”

Bob Penfield worked at Disneyland for 42 years after being trained by France in 1955, and the two became close friends. “He was very dedicated and very sharp,” Penfield said Thursday. “He developed a lot of new techniques in training and would go to other companies to show them how to do it the Disney way. He was very good with all the employees, much in the same way that Walt Disney was. He would go around the park and talk to employees--I think he carried on Walt’s tradition very well.”

France was born in the Seattle area and moved to San Diego with his family when he was 12, said Estelle Webb, his companion of 33 years.

He graduated from San Diego State and worked in industrial labor relations before being tapped to set up the Disney employee-training program before the park was completed. His assistant at the time was Richard Nunis, who went on to lap him professionally, eventually retiring as chairman of Disney Attractions.

France went into semi-retirement in the early 1980s but remained active until recently as a consultant, Webb said. An avid runner “before it was a fad” and later a walker, he was in strong health until falling several weeks ago, she said.

That began a series of problems that led to him contracting pneumonia, she said.

“Here he was for the last three weeks in a facility for rehab and everybody just loved him,” Webb said. “They said he was so sweet and understanding and kind, even though he couldn’t breathe.”

Then and throughout his life, she said, “he was an absolute delight. Whenever you walked down the streets of Disneyland with him everybody would yell, ‘Hey, Van!’ ”

France was also an advocate of public transportation and an avid bus rider who once wrote a pamphlet extolling the virtues of bus riding.

“It’s all in your attitude,” he said in one interview examining what most people would see as the frustrations of public transport. “Riding a bus is better than Zen. You become adjusted to other people and circumstances.”

France was married twice and is survived by two adult children, Cheryl France of Portland, Ore., and Sandy Steen of Albuquerque, N.M.; and several grandchildren.

The funeral will be private, Webb said.

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Times staff writer David Haldane contributed to this report.