Ken Kesey - Death of His Son

Death of His Son

In 1984, Kesey's 20-year-old son, Jed, a wrestler for the University of Oregon, was killed on the way to a tournament when the team's bald-tired van crashed. It went off the road in icy conditions and down a 185-ft slope. One team member, named Lorenzo West, was killed instantly, and Jed suffered a severe head injury. After two days in the hospital, he was declared brain dead, and his parents gave permission for his organs to be harvested. According to Kesey in a letter he wrote to friends at the time, 12 of Jed's organs were transplanted.

This deeply affected Kesey, who later said Jed was a victim of conservative, anti-government policy that starved the team of proper funding. There is a memorial dedicated to Jed on the top of Mount Pisgah, which is near the Keseys' home in Pleasant Hill. At a Grateful Dead Halloween concert just days after promoter Bill Graham died in a helicopter crash, Kesey appeared on stage in a tuxedo and delivered a eulogy while the Grateful Dead was playing the song "Dark Star", and he mentioned that Graham had paid for Jed's mountain-top memorial.