Veteran Disney animator Ollie Johnston, the last of the revered “Nine Old Men” who created the studio’s most famous works, such as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Bambi,” has died. He was 95.

Johnston died of natural causes Monday at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Wash., Walt Disney Studios Vice President Howard E. Green said Tuesday.

“Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today,” Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and director emeritus of the Walt Disney Co., said in a statement, as quoted by the Associated Press.

Johnston had been one of Walt Disney’s first collaborators. He joined the innovative motion picture producer in the 1930s, along with his close friend Frank Thomas, who was another of the famous “Nine Old Men.”

Walt Disney had called them thus referring to what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the nine judges of the US Supreme Court. Even though the animators were far from old at the time, the moniker stuck.

Johnston and Thomas were perhaps the best known of the group; with Thomas’ death in 2004, at the age of 92, Johnston had remained the last living member. Both animators worked on the first of Walt Disney Studios’ features, the 1937 classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Johnston was born on October 31, 1912, in Palo Alto, California. He attended Stanford University- where he met and befriended Thomas, and Chouinard Art Institute.

Johnston worked as an assistant animator on “Snow White,” became an animation supervisor on “Fantasia” and “Bambi” and animator on “Pinocchio.” He was a directing animator at Walt Disney Studios from 1935 to 1978, when both he and Thomas retired. His last full work for Disney came with “The Rescuers,” in which he was caricatured as one of the film’s characters, the cat Rufus.

The two friends spent the following years lecturing at schools and film festivals in the United States and Europe and co-authored the books “Bambi - the Story and the Film,” “Too Funny for Words,” “The Disney Villains” and the acclaimed reference book “Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life.”

Thomas’ son Theodore produced a documentary film about the two titled “Frank and Ollie.”

Johnston was also passionate about trains. He built an exquisite miniature railroad with his own hands which he kept in the backyard of his Flintridge home; he also restored and ran a full-size antique locomotive at a former vacation home in Julian, Calif.

Johnston was honored with a Disney Legends Award in 1989. In 2005, he was the first animator honored with the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony.

His wife of 63 years, Marie Worthey, died in 2005. Johnston is survived by sons Ken and Rick and daughters-in-law Carolyn Johnston and Teya Priest Johnston. The Walt Disney Studios is planning a life celebration for Johnston. Funeral services will be private.