Back in the late 80s at the VOA morning meeting it  was announced that the Grateful Dead would be in the downstairs conference room at 11 o’clock. A wannabe dead head, I strolled over to the C Street entrance where the band members emerged from a stretch limo.

With only the music editor providing a greeting, I asked Jerry Garcia if they would like to see the Ben Shahn social security frescoes near the disused front entrance to the VOA building. They would indeed.  They asked questions about “The Story of Social Security” panels from 1942.  That done, we went down to the conference room where the most memorable question from the audience was “what do you think of Nancy Reagan’s ‘just say no to drugs.’”

Ben Shahn mural, Cohen Building, Washington, DC

My first Dead concert was in 1970 at the Pauley ballroom on the UC Berkeley campus. Futurist Buckminster Fuller was popular then and one of his large inflatables was a kind of playroom off to the side of the hall.Much later I connected with Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally, whom I’d met when the band came to Voice of America.  By 1994 I was a real enthusiast and wrote a Financial Times article about Dead concerts I had attended in Washington.

The best quote from that piece was astronaut Buzz Aldrin saying that being on the moon “we were creatures on a cosmic ocean.”  It could have been a Grateful Dead lyric. 

While traveling cross country on Amtrak for a USA Today story in 2015, I was seated in the diner next to a real dead head. Amy had boarded the Southwest Chief in central-Illinois headed to New Mexico. She told me that at age 17 in the 90s she attended a Dead concert and was mesmerized by the music and the vibe. “After the concert,” she said, “I called my mom and told her I was quitting my job so I could travel around the country with band enthusiasts.” 

Barry and dead head Amy aboard Amtrak

Sadly, it’s been 30 years since Jerry Garcia died and I write this after learning that band co-founder, writer, singer and guitarist Bobby Weir died at age 78  January 10 , 2026. #

Barry D. Wood, former economics editor at Voice of America, is a Washington writer, author and broadcaster