ORLANDO, Fla. _ A longtime Walt Disney World worker who greeted guests at Disney's Polynesian Village Resort with hand-made leis and sometimes gave hula lessons has died. The death of Kau'I Brandt _ known to many people as Aunty Kau'I _ was reported Friday on her daughter's Instagram account.
Brandt, born in Hawaii in 1932, began working at Disney World as part of the opening-day staff in 1971. It was supposed to be a three-month luau gig in Florida after working for a summer at Disneyland. She ended up working at the Polynesian for decades.
"We are all deeply saddened by the passing of Auntie Kau'i, a longtime cast member and Hawaiian icon who brought happiness to millions throughout the years as she took such joy in immersing guests in Polynesian culture," Josh D'Amaro, president of Walt Disney World, said in a statement Friday.
Eventually Brandt's job title at the Poly became "cultural ambassador." She met incoming guests with fresh-flower leis and grass skirts, entertaining the youngest guests.
"If the kids are happy, the parents are happy," she told the Sentinel in 2009.
She was born during a lightning storm. Her mother named her Kauihealani _ or "thundering voice of heaven." A key event in her young life was the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, while sitting on her mother's roof in a town near Pearl Harbor, she told the Sentinel in 2014.
"My mom told me, 'It's war. Get off the roof.' I said, 'What's war?' We didn't know what war was. But, we learned. It was a tough time."
Years later, after learning to hula, she was recruited to be in a show at Disneyland. She said she turned it down multiple times.
"I've always heard once you leave Hawaii, you never go back," she said. "And I guess it's true because we left Hawaii for the summer of 1971, came up here to Florida only to help them open up the Polynesian Resort, and here I am."
