Remarks from Jack Blitch ('71), Vice President for Attractions Development at Walt Disney Imagineering
Envision ULM 2007 Speech - November 15, 2007
What an honor it is to be here at Envision ULM as your Alumni representative. It¹s hard for me to believe that it was almost exactly 40 years ago that I traveled up from New Orleans to Monroe as a freshman to attend Northeast Louisiana State College and four short years later, graduated from Northeast Louisiana University. The School of Construction was in its infancy, and as the son of an Architect, what better fit than construction?
There were only a few Schools of Construction in the country, and Northeast and Auburn were my two choices. I chose ULM because the program was being designed from the ground up and was not part of an existing architecture or engineering school. Thurman Potts was a true visionary when he sold his groundbreaking idea to the University and to the local contracting community. Since both of my mentors were architects, Thurman and my dad, I unknowingly at the time picked up a design sensitivity that has benefited me to this day.
When I graduated, I, along with the entire class, immediately found employment as the industry was just starting to catch on to Contractors with Bachelor¹s Degrees! ULM's reputation in the industry was well known and was the very first accredited school of construction. I spent 12 years with a construction company, then four years with a New Orleans developer, and that's where I made my Disney connection. At the time, I was the Project Director of the New Orleans Aquarium and since Disney had built the world's largest aquarium at Epcot, I sought them out as a consultant. While Disney did not end up working with us, I did not realize it, but they were interviewing me!
I started with Walt Disney Imagineering 20 years ago and have managed some incredible, one-of-a-kind projects including Tower of Terror, Blizzard Beach, Soarin' and Disney's largest ever theme park, Disney's Animal Kingdom. My mentors had no idea what they had prepared me for back in 1971, and now all those architectural history, economics, business law, and accounting classes at ULM made perfect sense and helped prepare me for my career. I now manage a group of 300 Imagineers at Walt Disney World, where we are challenged to create and deliver the impossible.
I have been serving on the School of Construction's Industry Advisory Board for the last decade and have witnessed the renaissance of ULM's campus when I visit it once a year. You should all be very proud of what you have nurtured, changed, and reinvented here at ULM. I, along with many graduates here at ULM, have been fortunate to be able to share some of our success through the Annual Fund, and I would strongly encourage each of you to renew your commitment to this great institution in that way. I would also encourage you to ask your companies to do matching gifts as I did with The Walt Disney Foundation. And, don't forget to include ULM in your will.
Debbie and I did.
I'll leave you with a quote from Walt Disney. Walt had many, many quotes, but one of the quotes that resonates with me a lot is:
'Disney Land will never be finished,' ... We can turn that same sentiment back to ULM ... ULM will never be finished through the support, dedication, hard work, contributions, of everybody in this room, it will never be finished. It will only get better.
Thank you.