Disney Mouseketeer Dennis Day Found Dead
A body found in April at the Oregon home of Dennis Day, an original Disney Mouseketeer who disappeared 11 months ago, has been identified as Day by the Oregon State Medical Examiner's office, although they were unable to use dental records or DNA because of the condition of the remains, according to a press release from the Oregon State Police. There was no word on the cause of death, nor whether it was the result of foul play or accident. The state police investigation remains ongoing, the press release said.
The body was found April 5 but at the time police did not say where or how long it had been there, nor how it might have been missed during previous searches. Day, 76, a Mouseketeer with Disney's Mickey Mouse Club for two years in the mid-1950s, had not been seen since July 2018, when he vanished from Phoenix in rural central Oregon.
He left behind his beloved cat and dog and his partner of more than 45 years, Ernest Caswell, who suffers from dementia-related memory problems and had been hospitalized after a fall and then transferred to assisted care.
In part due to Caswell's medical problems, there was a two-week delay in reporting Day's disappearance to police; his family was not notified until six months later and only heard about it on local news reports. Eventually, Day's ramshackle home and property were searched along with local cemeteries and canals, to no avail, according to Lt. Jeff Price, second-in-command of the tiny Phoenix police department.
Day's car was found about 200 miles away on the Oregon coast in the possession of two strangers who claimed Day let them borrow it. It was impounded by state police and later searched, but there was no sign of foul play, Price said.
Day was once among the most famous child performers on American television, dancing and singing on millions of black-and-white TVs across the nation, wearing the iconic mouse-ear beanie and sweaters emblazoned with his name. Caswell and Day moved to Oregon in the 1980s and eventually married.
He left behind his beloved cat and dog and his partner of more than 45 years, Ernest Caswell.
Dennis Day and Ernest Caswell on their wedding day in 2011.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2019/06/06/dennis-day-dead-mouseketeer-body-found-oregon-house-identified/3428263002/
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I still have my Mousgetar (and the box), and never mind someone stepped on it and cracked it fifty-nine years ago. My mom tuned it for me like a ukulele because she played the ukulele and, I guess, she convinced me it was really a uke.. Hell, she's ninety-five and still plays in her ukulele group (she bought a plastic ukulele a few years ago and swears by it).
It's totally fitting Jimmie's Mouseguitar was donated to CalArts because Disney put up the seed money to get it going.
