Disney animator Glen Keane thanks the crew who rescued him
The animator behind Ariel, the Beast, Aladdin, and Tarzan was airlifted off Arizona’s Mummy Mountain on July 29 after getting into trouble on a family hike, and he came back this week with a drawing of his own rescue for the crews who got him down.
Glen Keane spent 38 years drawing heroes for Disney. This week he brought a drawing to the ones who came and got him.
The 72-year-old animator visited Phoenix Fire Station 12 to meet the Phoenix and Tempe firefighters who hoisted him off Mummy Mountain in Paradise Valley, Arizona, on July 29. He handed over an original piece of art showing the rescue: himself being lifted to the helicopter, the crew on the ridge, his family being walked down.
He inscribed it “Our family helping your family.“
What happened on Mummy Mountain
Keane started up the mountain around 6 a.m. with family, including his grandchildren. He made the summit and then ran out of gas.
Phoenix Fire got the call shortly after 8 a.m. Capt. Todd Keller said the hiker was alert but couldn’t walk himself down, even with help.
Crews set a steep-angle rope system, hoisted him into a helicopter, and flew him to the base of the mountain. Paramedics checked him over. He declined a trip to the hospital and went home.
Keane told Arizona’s Family the hardest part was admitting “I can’t. I need help.“
Who Glen Keane is, and why Disney fans know the name
Keane joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1974 and stayed until 2012, which is most of the studio’s modern history in one career.
He was the supervising animator for Ariel in The Little Mermaid, the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, plus Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Tarzan. Disney named him a Disney Legend in 2013.
In 2018 he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short for Dear Basketball, the hand-drawn short he directed from Kobe Bryant‘s retirement poem.
He grew up in Paradise Valley from the age of five and now lives in Paris, which is why the mountain he got stuck on was the one from his childhood.
The Family Circus connection nobody mentioned
Keane’s father was Bil Keane, who created The Family Circus and moved the family to Paradise Valley in 1959. He drew the strip from that town until he died there in 2011.
Per D23, the Disney fan club, Glen was the model for Billy, the oldest kid in the strip.
Billy is the one from the dotted-line panels. The ones where the strip is a map of the neighborhood and a wandering trail loops past the swing set, over a fence, around the garage, and eventually home.
Seventy-two years old, back on the same hill above the same town, one route too many. His father would have drawn it.
The helicopter that got him is now grounded
There’s a footnote to this one that makes the timing look better than it was.
The Phoenix Firebird helicopter that lifted Keane off the ridge went out of service shortly afterward for out-of-state repairs, and it isn’t due back until October.
Keller used the rescue to make the usual point, and it’s a fair one in an Arizona July: hikers who overcommit in that heat put the crews who come for them at risk too. He noted the Mummy Mountain trail doesn’t close on extreme-heat days, so the gut check falls to the hiker.
Keane made roughly the same point himself, without the safety-briefing framing. He told the Phoenix crews he draws heroes for a living, and that this was not that.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
D23 profile of Glen Keane, his Disney tenure, the characters he supervised, and his father’s identification of him as the model for Billy in The Family Circus
Arizona’s Family (July 29 and August 7, 2026), Brian Petersheim Jr.’s reporting on the rescue and the station visit, plus Capt. Todd Keller’s account and Keane’s own comments
FOX 10 Phoenix (August 7, 2026), the artwork Keane presented, its inscription, and the Firebird helicopter’s out-of-service window
ABC15 Arizona (August 7, 2026), additional detail on the reunion at Phoenix Fire Station 12
The Hollywood Reporter (August 2026), national confirmation of the rescue and that Keane declined hospital transport