USC, 1954
• First Team 1952 Academic All-America®
Dick Nunis was inducted into the CoSIDA Academic All-America® Hall of Fame on June 9, 2014 in Orlando, Fla.
A member of Lester Jordan’s first Academic All-America
® team in 1952,
Dick Nunis was hailed as one of the best of his era to don the Cardinal and Gold of the University of Southern California. As a sophomore on the 1951 squad that featured Hall of Famer and legendary broadcaster
Frank Gifford, Nunis led the Trojans with six interceptions, and the following season he helped lead USC to a 10-1 overall record that included a 7-0 victory over Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl.
In the second-to-last game before that Rose Bowl triumph, however, Nunis saw his playing career come to an end when he suffered a broken neck in the third quarter of the Trojans’ 14-12 triumph over cross town rival UCLA, an event of which he later said “My injury, at the time, seemed a real tragedy. It turned out to be the best accident of my life.”
After earning a degree in education from USC in 1954, Nunis got in on the ground floor of a new venture in the Southern California region—the opening of Disneyland. He began as an hourly employee in 1955 and worked his way up to become Director of Operations in 1961 and later Vice President of Operations in 1968. He assumed the position of president of Walt Disney Attractions in 1980 and was named chairman in 1991, and for many years he was widely considered as
Walt Disney’s right-hand man. During his tenure, Disney grew from a company of 600 “cast members” to employing 13,000 people. Dick retired as chairman of Walt Disney Attractions in 1998 after 44 years with the company.
An active and visible member of the central Florida community, Nunis sits on the boards of several organizations and is director of Give Kids the World, a non-profit center for terminally ill children. He served as charter chairman of the University of Central Florida’s Board of Trustees for four years and was instrumental in the construction of UCF’s on-campus football stadium and basketball arena.
