 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
              
|
Whose dream was Epcot? The late Robert Jaffray said he walked into Disney's New York office in 1963 with concept drawings of an international theme park. A dozen years later, Disney unveiled plans for Epcot, which bears a striking resemblance to Jaffray's concept. Now, his ... Sunday, July 02, 2000 By Michael D. Sallah, The Toledo Blade
WOOSTER, Ohio -- Just days before he died, Robert Jaffray lay in his bed, fumbling with the air tubes in his nose as he tried to recall his creation.
On the wall above his bed was a painting of a giant globe -- a symbol of what was to be a spectacular theme park with fountains and a lake with model countries along the shore.
A former intelligence officer in the Cold War, he vowed decades ago that his park would break down barriers to help create world peace.
But the 81-year-old man, who died in April, knew he would never see his dream.
Someone, he said, had already built it.
Far from his home is Disney's Epcot, the global theme park in Orlando that bears a striking resemblance to a plan conceived by Jaffray 47 years ago -- nearly three decades before Epcot opened.
He said he took his plans to Disney officials in New York in 1963 to get them to invest in his 180-acre dreamscape: Miniature Worlds, to be built near the nation's capital. But Disney declined.
The surprise, he said, came more than a decade later.
Out of the swamps and pine forests of central Florida rose a theme park with an uncanny likeness to his creation.
Disney representatives say the company has no record of a meeting with Jaffray, and any resemblance of his plans to Epcot is purely coincidental. But the parallels are very real:
Epcot is shaped like an hourglass, with a giant globe at the entrance and a lake at the other end.
Epcot has 11 large-scale village nations -- with landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and an Aztec pyramid -- around a lake.
Epcot has a prize flower garden at one end of the lake and an outdoor amphitheater at the other.
Epcot has a monorail on trestles running into the park.
Epcot has a lake with islands and boats carrying people to the various countries.
One researcher of theme parks and expositions expressed surprise when he compared the Epcot and Jaffray layouts.
"These are more than similar ideas," said Hai Ren, a professor at Bowling Green State University. "I would say that Disney owes the family an explanation, at least as a matter of corporate responsibility."
Disney officials say there is no correspondence with Jaffray's Miniature Worlds in their archives.
Epcot was inspired by world's fairs and Disney's own creative executives, who were trying to build something other than the fairy-tale worlds they had become famous for, according to published accounts.
"There is absolutely no merit to this [Jaffray's] claim," said Disney spokeswoman Marie Garvey.
Efforts to solve the mystery are daunting: The Disney officials who could have met with Jaffray are dead, said a retired company executive. And the company has refused interview requests with those who are still alive.
Disney would not allow a reporter to inspect the drawings of Epcot, and through a spokeswoman declined to view the Jaffray plans.
After a long illness, Jaffray died in his home April 5, his body withered from years of strokes and sickness.
Though he never visited Epcot, two of his children have been there, and have hired an Orlando law firm to investigate why Disney's theme park is so strikingly similar to their father's creation.
John Stemberger, lawyer for the Jaffray family, said last week: "We are attempting in good faith to get answers from Disney. If Disney is not willing to help us discover the truth, then we will have no choice but to file a civil action to get to the truth. We are now in the process of assembling a legal team to that end."
Patricia Lowry, 52, one of Jaffray's two daughters, said, "My father put more than 10 years of his life into this. It was his dream. We want some closure."
A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Jaffray said in an interview last year he was living in Hawaii when a relative sent him an article about Epcot in 1980, complete with a concept painting. Scrawled in the margin of the article, the relative wrote: "Does this look familiar?"
He believed it was futile to try to stop the project.
"There was nothing I could do about it," he said, despite pleas by family members and friends to contact Disney.
"I didn't have the money," to pursue an investigation, he said, and he was living 4,700 miles away.
But the issue never went away and became the talk of family gatherings.
"I was upset," said the father of four before his death. "It bothered me. It still does. I spent a lot of time thinking about that."
After moving back to the mainland in 1989, he suffered a stroke, rendering him unable to walk. Despite his death, his family still wants him to be recognized for his years of work.
His detailed plan -- filed in the U.S. copyright office in 1956 -- presents an intriguing comparison to one of the country's most recognized vacation stops.
The towering geodesic globe at Epcot has become a pop culture landmark since its opening in 1982.
The park has two parts: Future World, with science, arts, and technology centers, and World Showcase -- the portion that bears the likeness to the Jaffray plans.
Like many entertainment businesses, the company started by legendary animator Walt Disney has been challenged in court by artists who claim their works were used by the company without their permission.
Some cases have been successfully defended by Disney; others have led to jury awards or settlements with artists.
Former U.S. Rep. Charles Vanik, D-Cleveland, who was asked to invest in the plans of Miniature Worlds in the 1950s, said the similarities between the site plans "are right there."
"Just look at the two. It raises all sorts of questions. The Jaffray family has every right in the world to ask these questions."
There are also differences in the plans -- some subtle, some noticeable. The Jaffray plan calls for the nations to be built in waist-high buildings on a scale of one inch for every foot, but the Epcot exhibits are closer to life size.
Another difference: The countries of Epcot are in different locations from where Jaffray placed his nations. One nation, however, the United States, is directly behind the amphitheater in both plans.
At the entrance to Epcot is Future World -- something never envisioned by Jaffray -- which was added to help finance construction of the entire park.
Disney officials say they have never heard of Jaffray and that the inspiration for Epcot came from past world's fairs.
But a review of more than 21 world's fairs since 1893 shows that Epcot is far closer in appearance to the Jaffray plan than to any world's fair.
Robert Jaffray was involved in the throes of the Cold War. A military intelligence officer, he was sent to England to monitor troop movements in communist countries in 1952.
Constantly watching for acts of aggression, his job was one of the most stressful in the U.S. intelligence corps, according to his military evaluations.
But the gangly, bespectacled captain was doing more than watching for war: He came up with an idea to bring nations closer together.
While visiting a miniature village west of London, he was struck by the serenity of the gardens and tiny people, he said.
"A world without war," he noted in a 1953 letter.
That is when he said he began a campaign to build an elaborate theme park of the world.
Disturbed by events exploding around the globe, the young father wanted to build an attraction that would break down cultural barriers, and "get people to understand" each other, he said.
There would be lushly landscaped countries around a lake with islands, boats, shops, and restaurants.
By creating the ideal world -- 19 nations scattered around a lake -- Jaffray said he could teach people about customs and lifestyles of other countries.
After his transfer back to the United States, he formed a Virginia corporation in 1955 known as Model Countrysides, naming himself as president, and two fellow military officers as directors.
In 1956, he took another step: He filed a 28-page business and site plan for Miniature Worlds with the copyright office.
It would be the first project of its kind, attracting 504,000 people the first year from all over America, the plan states.
"It was totally unique," said Hai Ren, the BGSU professor who has researched and written about theme parks of the world.
"He wanted to use a theme park to help create cultural understanding during the Cold War. I don't know of anyone who was doing that back then."
Jaffray spent his nights on the "alert desk" at the Pentagon, responsible for informing the military on threats to this country, and his days designing his theme park, according to records and interviews.
"It was like he was living two lives," said his daughter, Patricia.
"He would come home, really tired, and his plans were always around the house. He was always under the gun."
But she said he was a "dreamer," who was "sensitive to what was going on as far as nuclear war. He had children, and it made a big difference in his life." (Jaffray's daughter Patricia is not the Post-Gazette staff writer of the same name.)
James Davenport, 74, the only surviving director of Miniature Worlds, recalls the early planning years.
He served with Jaffray in England, and returned to this country in 1953 -- about the same time Jaffray was transferred to Washington.
"I was excited about it," said the ex-Navy serviceman. "I deliberately moved to the Washington area to be close to Jaffray because I really thought this thing would take off."
Word had already spread to high-ranking officers that one of their own was branching into an entirely different field, according to his military evaluations.
"He conceived an idea both idealistic and practical," wrote his superior, Col. Lewis Long, in 1958.
The park would be built near Route 50 west of the nation's capital in Fairfax County, Va., and would cost more than $2 million, the copyright filing shows. Years later, it was $4 million. But he had an idea to entice American corporations to help pay for it.
By allowing them to advertise within the park, "discreet, American-style advertising," they could help finance construction of the attraction, he noted in his copyright filing.
"I thought it was an ingenious idea," said former Rep. Vanik, who reviewed the plans then.
By 1959, Jaffray added the eight-story-tall globe, and two years later, revised the site plan.
But by 1962, he was in trouble.
To raise money for the drawings and land options, Jaffray sold bonds beginning in 1956. He was personally paying interest on the bonds to the buyers each year, with no sponsors in sight.
The bonds would have to paid back entirely in the ensuing years.
To most investors, his plan was a risk: There was no place like it in the country; so how did he know it would succeed?
Jaffray said he took his idea to corporations such as Lionel, the model train company, Ford, and Kodak in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y. But they were reluctant to invest, he said.
It was clear the plan needed a savior.
The answer, he said, was Disney.
In the conservative boardrooms of the 1950s, recreational fantasy was not a priority for American corporations. But Disneyland, a spectacular park that opened in 1955, showed adventure-for-profit was possible.
If Disney would come on board, others might follow, Jaffray recalled. Though he had tried unsuccessfully to reach the company seven years earlier, this time he had a better plan, he said.
With the help of Columbus television newscaster Wayne Byers, he tape recorded a narrative for a slide show about Miniature Worlds to make a more polished presentation.
The tapes and slides still exist, with Byers' name on the script, dated "20 November, '62."
After an extensive effort to reach Disney, Jaffray said, he got the break he was waiting for in 1963.
He and lawyer Dayton "Mike" Harrington, a Miniature Worlds officer, were invited to meet with Disney officials at their offices in New York, then at 447 Madison Ave.
Jaffray said they traveled by train from Washington.
He said Walt Disney, whose company was based in California, was not present.
Jaffray said he showed drawings and site plans to Disney officials, and gave them copies.
After the meeting, he thought he would get a positive response. "We waited," he said. "I thought they were interested."
He learned from his lawyer that Disney was not going to invest.
"It really crushed him," said daughter Patricia, who recalls long family discussions about the rejection. "When Disney said no, it was pretty much the end."
He continued to show his slides to anyone who asked, said family members.
By 1966, the Vietnam War was escalating, and Jaffray was spending longer hours at the Pentagon.
Miniature Worlds was shelved.
But another dream was beginning, one that gained far more attention than the Jaffray proposal: a plan to create the perfect city.
Walt Disney wanted to build a space-age community with the latest technology and an urban core under a dome.
His dream, known as Epcot (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), was to be a city of 20,000 near Orlando.
But in 1966, several months after his plans were unveiled, Disney died, leaving company executives scrambling over what to do.
Epcot was expensive and risky.
Disney officials decided instead to build another theme park -- the Magic Kingdom -- in 1971. But they were still undecided over how to honor Walt Disney's dream for Epcot.
What followed was a series of events that became critical to the way Epcot looks today.
In their design offices in Glendale, Calif., Disney creative designers went to work to create an entirely new version. The first plan, unveiled in 1975, was not well received.
The drawings showed two crescent-shaped buildings turned into each other with a courtyard in the center, and a nearby lake. There were 30 foreign, industrial-looking pavilions. There was no globe, or boats taking guests to various countries. The design was seen as "too sterile, and robotic," said Jeff Kurtti, a former Disney employee who wrote a history of Walt Disney World.
Disney officials returned to the drawing board.
Under veteran designer Harper Goff, who died in 1993, the plan went through various changes, Kurtti said.
One problem was getting the foreign countries to participate, partly because of politics and partly because of money.
It's unclear who was making the design changes, and why the company decided to create something that resembled a permanent world's fair.
A request to interview two Epcot creative designers still associated with Disney, Marty Sklar and John Hench, was turned down by Disney.
A radically new version of Epcot was unveiled in 1980 -- the one that is so closely mirrors Jaffray's plans.
Without seeing the drawings for Miniature Worlds, Karal Ann Marling, an educator who edited a book on Disney theme parks, declared it had nothing to do with Epcot.
She pointed out that past world's fairs featured streetscapes of foreign countries -- some even around water.
But an extensive review of maps and plans of every major world fair and exposition since 1893 shows there are no sites as similar to Epcot as the Jaffray plan.
In past fairs in Chicago in 1933 and 1893 and New York in 1939, there were foreign pavilions, but they were mostly in Neoclassical and industrial buildings that lacked any of the distinctive elements of the Jaffray and Disney parks.
The combination of a globe, lake, rail, boats, islands, and foreign nations built exclusively in scaled streetscapes was unique to Jaffray's site plans.
"There are many images that are in the public domain, such as the big globe, but he took them and mixed them into his own unique expression," said Stemberger, the lawyer for the Jaffrays.
When Jaffray filed his plans with the copyright office, there was no similar plan on file from Disney, a search of the Library of Congress shows.
When family members realized Jaffray was dying last year, they said, they decided to try to answer some of the questions about Epcot that had been nagging him for years.
One person who might have been able to help was Dayton Harrington, who Jaffray said accompanied him to visit Disney offices. But Harrington died in 1979. An active officer of Miniature Worlds, he owned 2,000 shares in the company.
The only surviving director, James Davenport, said he left the Washington area by 1956 and lost track of the project.
"I kept in touch with [Jaffray], and then after several years, we just kind of lost touch," said Davenport, who now lives in North Carolina.
He said the similarities between Epcot and Miniature Worlds are a "complete surprise to me. I never knew any of this."
Others who have compared the two site plans said they were struck by what they saw.
"These are strong parallels," said Michael Budd, a Florida Atlantic University professor who is organizing an educational conference on Disney in the fall. "It could be a very interesting debate."
Robert Rydell, a noted author of books on fairs and expositions, said Epcot is "in many ways, striking in its resemblance to Jaffray's plan," and based on the drawings alone, "a case could be made that Disney was sponging off Jaffray."
But, he said, without supporting documentation, "it's difficult to draw that conclusion."
"Unless you could get notes or something else from designers" to support such a claim, "it's tough to prove," said the Montana State University history professor. Both versions show echoes of world's fairs, he noted.
Irving Ludwig, a retired Disney executive who was in the New York office in 1963, said he does not remember any meeting with Jaffray. And others who may have worked there at the time are now dead, he said.
"It could have happened," said Ludwig, 88. "But I'm afraid I don't recall anything along those lines."
It was clear from old family letters that Jaffray had wanted to reach Disney for years.
A letter was sent to the company in 1955 about Miniature Worlds, according to a note sent by Jaffray's wife, Marian, to her parents.
"Still waiting with less and less hope for a reply from Disney. We sent the letter three weeks ago," she wrote in her note on Jan. 8, 1956. There's no record the company responded to the inquiry.
Two other letters were exchanged among family members in 1955 and 1956 stating the need to tie Disney into the plan. It was not until seven years later, Jaffray said, that he was able to see anyone.
Because Jaffray showed his plans to other corporations, Budd questioned how many Miniature World plans "were out there floating around" at the time. "Could this have been picked up, inadvertently, in another way?"
Jaffray took his plans to Lionel and Kodak, two companies with long-standing relationships with Disney.
Kodak was one of Disney's original concessionaires at Disneyland in 1955, and Lionel began designing toy trains featuring Disney characters in the 1930s.
There is also a possibility of a coincidence -- "quite a coincidence" -- that the plans for Miniature Worlds and Epcot evolved separately, said Budd.
"Maybe [Jaffray] and Disney were going in the same direction from a design standpoint."
In an interview last year, however, Jaffray said he did not base his idea on a world's fair.
The globe was added to show the universal appeal of the park, but the idea of Miniature Worlds was not to replicate a world's fair. "That was not my plan," he said.
Marling said Disney can show that the design of Epcot went through several versions before a final plan was adopted.
"There was no need for anyone from the outside to intercede in that process," she said, referring to Jaffray.
Jaffray family members say they are not arguing that point. They argue that Disney had access to Jaffray's plans a decade before the creative process for Epcot even began.
After Jaffray set aside the project, he repaid investors more than $6,000, said his wife.
"I knew he felt a sense of humiliation, more than he wanted us to know," she said. "It bothered him for a long time. I guess he felt it was a defeat. It was his chance to do something that he felt was important.
"After a while, he just kind of kept it all inside."
Robert Tucker, 57, an assistant football coach at Youngstown State University who is married to Jaffray's daughter Lynn, said he was surprised when he first visited Epcot in 1990.
After years of listening to Jaffray talk about Miniature Worlds, "It made me think that the colonel wasn't that far off as far as his imagination goes," he said
"He was really onto something. It was very close to what he was describing all those years."
Jaffray's daughter, Patricia Lowry, said she visited Epcot for the first time in February and became very emotional.
"As I got closer to the globe, I just started to lose it," she said. "It was so much like my father's plan. I just stood there and looked at everything and cried."
She and family lawyer Stemberger say they will press for answers. They are not sure what they will find.
After returning to the mainland a decade ago, Robert Jaffray moved to Wooster, Ohio, the town where he went to college and met his wife nearly 60 years ago.
Packed in his belongings were the vestiges of his dream and a brochure written by Jaffray about his park.
More than anything else, he believed Miniature Worlds could help Americans understand other people -- their customs, lifestyles, and arts.
"We nurse a hopelessly confused and unfair conception of our globe," he wrote in 1953. "We regard our own country as the focal point of the universe, and we tend to judge all things, all developments, from the narrow relationship of our own surroundings."
By creating a place to entertain and educate people about foreign lands, Miniature Worlds can "establish an enduring testament and monument to international peace and understanding."
Jaffray even went so far as to make a prediction in a 1953 letter to potential investors that reflected his faith in the project.
"If maintained at a high standard, and constructed in good taste," he wrote. "It has an excellent chance of becoming a national institution."
Correction/Clarification: An earlier version of this story included one or more photos by Allan Detrich. The photos have been removed. This action is explained in a note from the editor.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Dressed up for Disney's Millennium celebration, Epcot, one of America's most popular tourist attractions, opened in 1982 -- nearly three decades after a similar plan was conceived by Jaffray.