I didn’t want to post this until I saw it publicly announced, but one of my beloved colleagues passed away suddenly last week while skiing in Mammoth. John Verity and I were two of the leads on Hong Kong Disneyland. John also worked on Disneyland Paris as project manager for Frontierland, and going back further, was a major force in the building of Tokyo Disneyland. John came from a long line of Disney “Veritys” starting w/his grandfather, who in the 1930s was a carpenter at the Hyperion Studios. John’s father Erwin produced the True Life Adventures, and his brother Jim, who I also worked with, helped pioneer Audio-Animatronics.
But of the Veritys, John was the leadership model, calmly and thoughtfully finding solutions to problems I would have thought were insurmountable. Older than me, and calmer and wiser, he was the very model of what an Imagineering project manager should be, and a true partner.
At Disneyland Paris, the Main Street window honoring John has been draped in black, as firemen do for a fallen brother.
(Thanks to Robin Reardon for the window photo).