1. Theodore Jorgensen was an American unicycle hockey player, the president of the world's first unicycle hockey club, and a bicycle shop owner-operator.
15 Facts About Ted Jorgensen
1. 2.
Ted Jorgensen was born in Chicago to a Danish-American family that moved to Albuquerque when he was a teenager.
3.
Ted Jorgensen was a unicyclist who performed at the Ringling Bros.
4.
Ted Jorgensen married Jackie Gise in 1963 and fathered Jeff with her in 1964, before divorcing her when Jeff was seventeen months old.
5.
Ted Jorgensen owned a bicycle shop in Glendale, Arizona, and was married to his new wife, Linda.
6.
In 2012, journalist Brad Stone informed Ted Jorgensen that his biological son was an e-commerce billionaire, something Stone had discovered while doing research for his book, The Everything Store.
7.
Ted Jorgensen's paternal grandfather was a Danish veteran of the Spanish-American War.
8.
Ted Jorgensen became vice president of the club in 1959, won the club's award for "most versatile rider" in 1961 and took over as club president in 1962.
9.
Ted Jorgensen became pregnant in 1963 when Jorgensen was 18 and she was 16, shortly before they got married in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
10.
Ted Jorgensen supplemented his circus income by working at the Globe department store while studying at the University of New Mexico.
11.
Gise and her husband and son left that area and asked Ted Jorgensen to discontinue contact, to which he agreed, relinquishing custody.
12.
Ted Jorgensen later relocated the Roadrunner Bike Center to Glendale, Arizona.
13.
Around 1988, Ted Jorgensen married his second wife, Linda, who had four sons with a previous partner.
14.
In 2012, journalist and author Brad Stone contacted Jorgensen after identifying him as billionaire Jeff Bezos's biological father while researching for his upcoming book The Everything Store, which was published in 2013.
15.
One year after learning who his son was, Jorgensen had not reconnected to Bezos.