However, Disney was still not a perfect place for a young gay man. Joel said, “Disney, in general, became a bastion for gay guys,” because of the difficulty LGBTQ+ individuals faced finding jobs in the early 1980s in Florida. After a summer working for Disneyland in California, he moved to Orlando in 1982 to work as a cast member of Walt Disney World Studios. During the summer of 2017, I had the honor of recording an oral history with him about his time as a Disney character actor.īorn in Sycamore, Illinois, on Leap Day, February 29, 1960, Joel was the fourth of eight siblings. He was a hilarious, generous, and hard-working man. He is dear to so many peoples’ hearts and will always be a local LGBTQ+ hero, but it’s important to remember other parts of Joel Strack’s story, especially the pride he had in his career at Disney. He was a founding member of the Orlando Gay Chorus and a long-standing board member of The Center on Mills Avenue, which serves the LGBTQ+ community, as well as a driving force of the LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida. During his years in Orlando, he collaborated with other Central Florida LGBTQ+ activists to organize Gay Days, Come Out with Pride, and Orlando’s first Pride Parade.
Joel Strack lived his life out and proud during extremely difficult times for gay men in America. Orlando lost one of its most prominent and beloved gay icons on July 15, 2019.
