Yesterday, we all said our farewells to a great person, a wonderful friend and a fantastically brilliant co-worker. Autumn passed away earlier in last week for reasons I don’t want to discuss because when I was given the news at my job, I choked up, needing a few minutes to pull myself together, refocus on what I was doing.
It was a very awesome ceremony. Given Autumn’s love of sports and music, we were asked to wear either our favorite team’s jersey (any sport) or the same for our favorite artist. A few people spoke to give their favorite anecdotes about her too. Several songs were played while a collection of photos were presented in a slide show. I laughed a little, it was just funny to see Autumn make a goofy face or stick out her tongue. Over the years I often interacted with her, she was serious and had a deadpan on par with the great Paul Mooney or Jonathan Katz. I also didn’t know she was a Parrot Head! I guess Jimmy Buffet does cross over the generations!
I was happy to finally Autumn’s wife, let her know, I’m the prankster who gave Autumn the shirt of Wonder Woman punching Donald Trump in the face. I didn’t do it for politics, I just knew she was a fan of Wonder Woman first. I also gave a belated thank you for all the Starbucks free app cards a decade ago; she used to be a manager and her shop had more drive-thru traffic than sit down. Ergo, she’d give Autumn stacks of these cards with the activation codes in which many of us would put into spreadsheets to demonstrate how Apple Configurator could distribute iOS apps without tying them to an Apple ID. I do hope I get to see more of her (protecting her identity out of respect with pronouns/aliases, plus I don’t know her very well).
Being this is my site, I want to share with you all my great stories about Autumn and how she made the world a better place for everybody she encountered. I recall she joined my team over a decade ago and I’m go to the mat thinking she was a direct hire, something very uncommon. I think I was relatively new at the role I have today too. After a few weeks of interacting with Autumn, I was of the opinion…this person is overqualified to be in our ranks, we need to find a way to move her into something better suited for the smarts she demonstrates, otherwise, we could lose this talent. I’m grateful she toughed it out as we finagled a way to get the interview to a well-deserved (and overdue) promotion and then on to the engineering track. Autumn was brilliant but thorough. One time, I got to be in the conversation letting her know in her help desk role, “You don’t have to take over every call from the tier ones. If they can handle it or they’re just wanting re-assurance on what they’re thinking, you can let them finish.” Her response was priceless, “Oh, I thought I had to because I wanted to make sure the customer got a right answer.” It was said with such sincerity and without an ounce of arrogance…I briefly thought Autumn was a Vulcan.
I know I often enjoyed working with her, I only hope it was mutual given I am not bright when it comes to the deeper, inner workings of Tech or Science. I regret not discovering how much Autumn was into Astronomy and its related fields. The universe, the stars, exo-planets, etc. have been a passion of mine since childhood. I would’ve been thrilled to be schooled by someone who understood Hawking, Kaku, Sagan and Degrasse-Tyson!
One last thing about Autumn that made her an admirable person, a love of animals. The service mentioned how she would be joining numerous pets and other than donations to Austin’s music fund, helping the Austin Humane Society was another thing to give in lieu of flowers. I know I will be doubling down on fostering more kittens next Spring.\
Farewell Autumn! In our brief association and interactions, you made a dent in dozens of people’s lives and millions of technology users. You were a heroine to many, including me and I want to thank you for everything, especially when I stare up at Orion’s Belt during an evening’s walk to my mail box.