Posts Tagged ‘Bob Weir Grateful Dead’

Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir on being adopted and meeting his birth father

Monday, February 14th, 2011

My brother sent me this link to an article about Grateful Dead guitarist and founding member Bob Weir, who was adopted, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. The article appears to date from some years ago, but I’ve never seen it before. I loved reading it and hope you do, too. The article begins:

Both my natural and adopted fathers were military men. My adopted dad attended Annapolis for seven years and came out with the military equivalent of a doctorate in Engineering. When they gave him his first commission and put him out to sea he was seasick from the time he left port to the time he got back. It was so bad they had to put him in the hospital. Then he tried it again right at the beginning of World War II. He wanted nothing more than to serve his country but it just was not going to happen. He showed a lot of perseverance. He was quite a guy. In fact, never in my presence did he ever use bad language. Rarely did I see him ever become angry, and it was not that he wasn’t a lively, energized person, he was just a consummate gentleman…

My natural father was born and raised in the Tucson, AZ area. He was 19 when he joined the Air Force and they put him behind the wheel of a bomber. He later became a test pilot and rose to the rank of Colonel. In fact, when he announced he was retiring, they offered him a Generalship but he declined because he had a son who was terminally ill.

My adopted parents passed on in 1972 from separate illnesses. My mom died on my dad’s birthday and a month later my dad died on my mom’s birthday.  So you don’t argue with that kind of stuff. Then about ten years went by and I came home from a tour and it was my first night home and I was trying to sleep in. I had this very strange dream about my family home, my brother and a stillborn baby. And at the point of the dream where my brother and I pick up the baby and hold it, and each other, I was awakened by the phone ringing in real life. It was the Grateful Dead office calling to say there was a lady on the phone by the name of Phyllis who says she’s your mother and did I know anything about this. Apparently she had known for some time who I was and had tracked me, but had to sign a promise not to contact me while my adopted parents were still living. 
  
I myself had actually done some research to try and find her but she pretty effectively covered her tracks. But I went and met her the next day and unfortunately we did not exactly hit it off ­ she had twelve other kids. So I could ascertain with a fair bit of ease that she didn’t really have a need for me in her life. But I kept in touch with her, called her on Mother’s day and over this time she gave me some information regarding my dad; his name and where she last saw him which at that point was 40+ years. (more…)

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