When Thom Coghlan, one of the magazine’s most loyal supporters and now a personal friend, texted me on Friday, Feb. 13, that his boss and CEO of Huskey Building Supply, Austin Huskey, had passed away earlier that day in a plane crash, the shock was overwhelming.
The grief was instant. We had just celebrated him and his family business on the cover of Nashville Interiors a few months ago, with a big event in their newly renovated showroom. We were all excited about what the future held for Huskey and us. The news didn’t seem real.
Austin was not just an advertiser — he was a visionary. A steward of a third-generation family business, he is ushering the company forward while, impossibly, honoring the foundation of community and excellence his grandfather and then father laid out decades before he was born.
His loss ripples across so many areas and connections — his employees, his vendors. His church community. His wife and young daughters. His brother and business partner, Taylor. And every person who had the honor to know him, because it is likely Austin made them feel as though he was the one who was honored.
“Austin placed a premium on listening to every person under his stewardship and empowering them to grow and succeed,” Coghlan said. “His love was felt in every room he entered, giving time to everyone he came into contact with. No voice was too small, no opinion too little.”
Austin led by example, led by being in the arena, and led by his own actions and words.
“Austin was often the shortest guy in the room, but always the biggest, because he made everybody else feel big,” Coghlan says. “There was not a person he interacted with that he was not willing to give time to. If you had a question, he would answer you. His door was always open, and every person mattered to him, and that’s how he lived his life. He didn’t have to flaunt anything to have a presence in a room. He knew who he was, and that gave him freedom to walk everything he believed.”
The team at Huskey Building Supply, his family, his friends, and his community are all in our thoughts as we grieve his unexpected loss.
