Jay Ward

Ward, the son of Joseph Ward Cohen (1890–1967) and Mercedes Juanita Troplong Ward (1892–1972), was born Joseph Ward Cohen Jr. and was raised in Berkeley, California; he earned his undergraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned his MBA from Harvard University. His first career was real estate. Even when his animation company was at the height of its success, he continued to own his own real estate firm as a "fallback" business.\n', ' Ward married Ramona "Billie" Ward in 1943; the couple had three children: Ron, Carey, and Tiffany.\n', ' Ward moved into the young mass medium of television with the help of his childhood friend, the animator Alex Anderson. Taking the character Crusader Rabbit to NBC-TV and the pioneering distributor of TV-programs, Jerry Fairbanks, they put together a pilot film, The Comic Strips of Television, featuring Crusader Rabbit, Hamhock Bones, a parody of Sherlock Holmes, and Dudley Do-Right, a bumbling Canadian Mountie.\n', '