kartooner

Dur­ing the early 1960s my great-grandfather worked at Dis­ney­land as a custodian.

He was a jan­i­tor, those hard work­ing indi­vid­u­als who most of the time go unno­ticed, and like but­lers are often blamed for miss­ing items. His job at Dis­ney­land was to pick up the trash, clean toi­lets and make sure the park was kept clean through­out the day’s events.

He never com­plained about his job. Granted, it wasn’t the most lux­u­ri­ous posi­tion and clean­ing up after other peo­ple — in this case thou­sands of them — wasn’t some­thing to come home and brag about. Despite this, he always did his best and the qual­ity of his work impressed those around him, includ­ing a man who was often seen rid­ing in a golf cart over­see­ing the oper­a­tions of Disneyland.

After park oper­a­tion hours Walt Dis­ney would on occa­sion pick my great-grandfather up in his golf cart and together they would ride through­out Dis­ney­land. Walt was fas­ci­nated with Dis­ney­land, a per­sonal project of his, that had been in the works ever since he had the idea while look­ing out at the empty lot across from the Buena Vista stu­dios. With my great-grandfather as his pas­sen­ger Walt would pro­ceed to give his guest a per­sonal tour of the park.

In his tour he would share insights about the park and most impor­tant of all; his excite­ment for a dream come true. While most of the infor­ma­tion shared with my great-grandfather stayed with him he did reveal that Wal­ter Elias Dis­ney was a man with unique vision and heart.

When my grand­fa­ther retired Walt Dis­ney invited him to din­ner and pre­sented Johnny Reinsvold with a plaque. It com­mended my great-grandfather for his excep­tional ser­vice and wished him the best in life. The plaque, signed by Walt Dis­ney, still resides in the fam­ily and serves the pur­pose of remind­ing any­one that no mat­ter what the job is what’s impor­tant is the qual­ity of work that you put into it.