WASHINGTON – Amazon CEO and new owner of the Washington Post appears to be following in the footsteps of several other prominent men in history who missed out on a relationship with their biological fathers.
Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone notes that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Steve Jobs are among several powerful men who never knew their fathers or lost their fathers at a young age.
Stone notes that Bezos has never hid the fact that he has no relationship with his birth father, Ted Jorgensen, and that the only time he thinks about the man is when he is filling out medical history forms.
In a new article, Stone chronicles the trail he followed to track down the father of the multibillionaire.
Bezos’ mother was 17 when he was born, his father was 19. A few years later, Jorgensen took off.
Bezos was adopted by his mother’s second husband, Miguel, a Cuban immigrant, who eventually would invest in his son’s online bookstore.
With help from the Internet, Stone says he found every “Ted Jorgensen” in the country, before narrowing it down to one in Glendale, Ariz., who owned a bike shop.
Stone writes about his encounter with Bezos’ dad.
“Your son is one of the most successful men on the planet,” Stone writes of telling Jorgensen, as he showed him a photo of his son, for the first time in 45 years.
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