Ruthie Tompson
Ruth Irene Tompson (July 22, 1910 – October 10, 2021) was an American camera technician, animation checker and supercentenarian. She was known for her work on animated features at The Walt Disney Company and was declared a Disney Legend in 2000. Biography. Ruth Irene Tompson was born on July 22, 1910, in Portland, Maine, and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She then moved with her family to Oakland, California in November 1918 at age eight. She experienced the 1918 influenza pandemic near the end of World War I. In 1924, her parents divorced and her mother, Arlene, remarried artist John  Roberts. The family relocated to Los Angeles and their house was in the same block as the house of Robert Disney, uncle of Walt Disney. This is where Roy and Walt Disney lived when they first came to Los Angeles. As she stated in an interview, Tompson first met the Disneys when she visited her neighbor Robert's new baby. She recalls sitting on an apple box until her parents said they were going home for dinner. The location of The Walt Disney Company, then known as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, was not far from her home – she passed  it on her way to grammar school. She was invited into the office after many times standing outside and watching them work through the window. She visited the office often and ended up appearing in the "Alice Comedies". At the age of 18, Tompson started working at Dubrock's Riding Academy, where Roy and Walt Disney often played polo. Walt Disney remembered Tompson from when she was young and offered her a job as an inker. After training as an inker, Tompson was transferred to the Paint Department, where she helped with Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs