Stone dives into the father figure rarely discussed in previous profiles of Amazon's leader: his absentee father. Growing up with his mother and step-father, Bezos last saw Ted Jorgenson, his birth father, when he was a toddler. Doing some digging, the author found that Jorgenson was a circus performer and a prominent unicyclist in Albuquerque. After marrying Bezos's mom at 18, he worked at a department store for $1.25 an hour, but his drinking habits and lack of direction led his wife to divorce him when Bezos was just 17 months old. Stone tracked down Jorgenson behind the counter of his bike shop, and discovered Bezos's birth father had no idea what had become of his son. "Is he still alive?" the man asked.
Friday, October 11, 2013
On Jeff Bezos' Absentee Father
The Daily Beast reports on the upcoming book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, written by Brad Stone:
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This made me cry.
ReplyDeleteI'm so lucky to have the greatest dad on earth- my partner, who died 2 months ago, had a dad that told him "I'd rather you be dead than gay". I hate him. He got his dead gay son, and cried about it. I hope he burns.
Sometimes desertion is a gift.
ReplyDeleteThere is a scene at the end of the movie "Riding in Cars with Boys" where the heroin addicted lowlife loser Ray Hazek (played flawlessly by Steve Zahn) tells his grown son something like, "The best thing I ever did was get out of your life."
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