In May of 2023, Corinn Hooper was browsing a Goodwill when a fresh cart was brought out to the sales floor. She’d been studying how to buy and sell used items on YouTube and learned that these carts had the potential to hold treasures not yet picked over by other customers. But this day exceeded expectations. “Right off the bat I discovered Mickey Mouse poking his magical hat out the top of the cart,” she says. It was an award for 15 years of service at The Walt Disney Company for someone named Floyd Norman. Digging deeper, she found two small statues, as well as another award for Norman, this one a Sergio from the Comic Art Professional Society.
“I knew I needed to bring them home for my husband to see,” she says. Her husband happened to be Carl Hooper, an industry veteran then working as an FX Supervisor at DreamWorks. The couple researched Norman, excited to learn that he was an animation legend who started his career at age 20, working on Disney TV shows before joining the crew of Sleeping Beauty in 1957 and becoming one of the studio’s first African American animators. Norman had spent most of his career at Disney, with a break to co-found Vignette Films in 1966.
Hooper took photos of the awards and statues, and he sent them around to his colleagues. One of them, Thom Wickes, used to work with a VFX Supervisor named Marlon West at Disney—he happened to know that West was friends with Norman.
Once West got involved, he reached out to Norman and immediately heard back from his wife, Adrienne. They had no idea the items were even missing. Earlier in the year, the Normans had been remodeling their home in Pasadena. Doors were open as workers went in and out. “Unfortunately, the contractors did not notice a stranger rummaging through [boxes] in our garage,” Norman says. “Items were stolen, and we were none the wiser.” Nor could anyone figure out how the awards found their way from Pasadena to a Goodwill on the westside of L.A.
West and his wife drove across town to the Hoopers to pick up Norman’s awards, and then delivered them the next day. It was serendipitous that West wound up being the one returning these items. He has also officially presented Norman with two other awards: the Legendary Animator Award from the African American Film Critics Association in 2017 and a Hall of Fame Award at The World Animation Summit in 2023. West calls Norman “the Quincy Jones of animation, a creative force to be reckoned with.” But his connection is also personal. The couples get together regularly for breakfast, and West says the Normans are like an aunt and uncle to him.
While Norman was grateful to have the awards returned, it wasn’t about the objects themselves. “I tend not to make a big deal over statues, plaques, and other items often given during the course of one’s career,” he says. “The awards are very special to me only in the fact they’re connected to my many years in the animation business and the amazing people I’ve had the pleasure of working with during that time. My sincere thanks to Marlon West and his dear friends and colleagues who were caring enough to track me down and return the stolen items. I can never say ‘thank you’ enough.”
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