November 6 - Bruce Gordon

On this day, in 2007, Imagineer Bruce Gordon passed away in Glendale, California. Born on April 18, 1951 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Bruce did most of his growing up in Palo Alto, California. He went to Disneyland with his family shortly after it opened in 1955 and was hooked on all things Disney for life. So hooked, he would spend his teen years building models of his favorite attractions in his parents garage. A hobby that paid off in the early 1980s, when Bruce landed a job with the Walt Disney Company.

One of the first projects Bruce had with the company was as (surprise!) a prop builder for the Journey Into Imagination attraction at Epcot. Another long time Imagineer, Tony Baxter, first met Bruce on that project and immediately bonded with him. Years later, Tony would call their partnership nearly perfect as Tony "was an idea guy and Bruce could turn ideas into reality."

Bruce would integral to turning the idea of Splash Mountain into reality, earning himself a show producer credit on that attraction. He would also produce the show for the renovation of Fantasyland, the building of the Winnie the Pooh ride, and the creation Tarzan's Treehouse and the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. On top of all that, Bruce also has a show writer credit for Star Tours.

Bruce's side hobby of sorts was writing books about Disney. His most famous book is a 4.5 pound tome titled Disneyland: The Nickel Tour. It's a history of Disneyland told through picture postcards from the park with unique stories about each one. The company declined to print it because they felt it would be too expensive to bother, so Bruce and his co-author, fellow Imagineer David Mumford, self-published it. That was a good move as it made it through a third printing. Bruce also wrote The Art of Disneyland, The Art of Walt Disney World, Disneyland: Then, Now and Forever and Walt Disney World: Then, Now and Forever.

Near the end of his life, Bruce had actually left Walt Disney Imagineering to work on another project. Walt's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, had personally asked him to help with the creation of the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, California. She was impressed with Bruce's ability to see her father as a man, rather than a brand. Sadly, Bruce would suddenly pass away before the museum was opened, but not before he had a major influence on the look and feel of it. He was only 56 years old.