His name was Austin.

It may seem strange to some people that one can mourn the loss of someone they've never met. But, we've had plenty of practice the last few weeks - Ed, Billy, Farrah, Michael, Karl. The latest to tear at my heart is Austin.

Austin was the monorail driver of the Purple monorail who recently lost his life during a freak accident at the end of a very long, holiday at Walt Disney World. Austin was a recent graduate of Celebration High School and was working at WDW part time while he attending college locally. He was proud of his job of driving on "the highway in the sky" as he described it. His fellow coworkers and his monorail driver instructor remember him as a very likable young man who passed his 10 day monorail training and stiff end-of-training test with flying colors.

My older son, Jim worked at WDW for quite some time before he married. He worked his way up from picking garbage up on Main Street USA in the Magic Kingdom to being the "ghoulish" host of the Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios. He as well as most other Disney employees will admit that you aren't there for the money. Disney does not have a reputation of paying top dollar to their employees. People who work at Disney do so because they love the place and they are a people person and they genuinely like making people's vacation special. Austin was the kind of employee that Walt would have been very proud to hire. A week or so before he died, a family was privileged to ride in the front monorail cab with Austin as they made their way to the Magic Kingdom. They took a video of the experience which they have shared with the world. It is their tribute to Austin and it is part of the legacy that this young man left. Here is the link:

Disney visitors remember monorail pilot Austin Wuennenberg

My heart and prayers to out to Austin's family. Thank you for sharing him with us for awhile.

*monrail symbol courtesy of Allears.net