Joseph Erskine Welsh
Sept. 19, 1949-Feb. 27, 2026
Atherton, California

Born in San Francisco and raised in Palo Alto and Santa Cruz, Joseph Erskine Welsh was a true California boy. He surfed the Rivermouth in Santa Cruz on a 9’6” Jack’s longboard and skied the steep slopes of Lake Tahoe on the new Head Aluminum Standard skis. When he was 10 years old, he rode the Squaw Peak chairlift serving modern-day Siberia with a frightened Icelandic downhiller who subsequently wiped out on the steep terrain of the 1960 Olympic downhill. On the morning of his oldest daughter’s wedding in 2008, he skied that same slope with his family (and none of them wiped out).

Joe graduated from Palo Alto High School, where his claim to fame was almost beating Mark Spitz in the 100-yard butterfly the year before he won the silver medal in that same event at the Mexico City Olympic Games. He was a member of the varsity water polo and swimming teams at Stanford University, where he received a BA in Biology in 1971 and subsequently an MD in 1975. After a six-year residency at the University of Virginia in neurosurgery, Joe returned to California to raise his family, ever drawn to the mountains he loved and his family home in Dollar Point.

Joe’s career touched many lives as he gracefully merged the complexity of brain surgery with deep empathy for the physical and emotional suffering of others. He found solace in poetry and the beauty of the great outdoors. He hosted countless sunbaked days in his hometown on SeaBright Beach, fly fishing trips in the Trinity Alps and an annual birthday celebration at the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.

He is survived by his six children: Joseph Erskine Welsh, Jr., Lindsay McConnon, Erin Keefe, Courtney Yarbrough, Jacob Welsh, and Zachary Welsh, his ten grandchildren, his wife, Anne Ziffer Welsh, and siblings Jeffie Feakins, Sally Welsh, John Welsh, and David Welsh. Joe was surrounded by the deep love of lifelong friends until the end. He was a world champion eater of vanilla ice cream and salted peanuts, knew every single baseball stat for the San Francisco Giants, and was a devoted Stanford fan.