For David Greer, the problem is very basic.

“I’ve lost my head,” he says, “and I want to get it back.”

But the quest for Greer’s “head” — a nearly life-sized bronze bust of his head created 60 or more years ago by noted American sculptor and Cape Ann, Massachusetts, resident George Demetrios (1896-1974) — has proven anything but basic over the last five years.

The bust was sold at auction by a lifelong friend who had held it for nearly three decades. Neither Greer, now 84, nor anyone else has been able to find out who bought it, but that hasn’t deterred the longtime California resident and regular Cape Ann visitor from his hopes of finding it.

“It is, after all, my head,” Greer said in a phone interview from his Albany, California, home, “and I’d like to see it again.”

The saga dates to the 1950s, Greer recounts, when he was in his late teens or early 20s and was returning home to West Gloucester, Massachusetts over the summer while a student at Yale University. Greer’s parents were friends of Demetrios, who lived in the Lanesville neighborhood with his wife, children’s author Virginia Lee Burton, and had a studio at Folly Cove. Demetrios would often craft busts of the heads of Greer’s friends and family members, including one smaller work depicting Greer’s grandmother — a piece he still has.

At one point, Demetrios asked the Greers if he could do a bust of young Dave. He did, and the Greers cherished it. But a few years later — out of school and looking for a job — Dave Greer and his first wife, the former Betty Hirota, set out for California.

Dave decided not to take the bust, leaving it with his parents at their West Gloucester home. But when his parents died in the early 1980s, he didn’t want to take it back to California, so he left it in the hands of his longtime friend, Patricia Kain, who says she was honored to keep it.

“I was thrilled to have it,” says Patricia Kain Earle, who is now 80, still lives in Lanesville and is well known as a local education activist. “For one thing, it was a Demetrios, but beyond that, it was of a great friend whom I loved and cared deeply about. Who wouldn’t want to have something like that?”

Greer worked in California as a teacher. “I wanted to do that because I knew I could have summers off, and I could keep coming back to Cape Ann,” he said. So he kept up regular visits for years, and he, Earle and her family would see each other and they remained good friends.

But Greer’s visits became less frequent as he grew older and faced a number of health problems. By 2013 — the last time he visited — he sensed he could no longer make the trip, and he decided he’d like to retrieve his “head” to bring it home.

“I said, ‘Pat, I hate to ask you this, but I need you to give me back my head,’” he recalls.

“I told him, ‘I can’t,’” Earle says. “I had to tell him I no longer had it.”

In 2008, Earle’s husband — the late Richard M. Earle, who died in 2013 — had been diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a disease that is not only rare but one that is “orphaned,” Earle says.

“That means there’s no treatment, no cure, no coverage,” she recalls. “I had to look to sell just about everything I owned. As much as I cherished Mr. Greer’s head, I thought he had given it to me, and it was one of things I had to part with.”

So, in 2010, Earle sold the bust through March/Blackwood Antiques and Auctioneers of Essex, she and Greer said. She said she did not recall the sale price; Greer said he recalls it being around $288. Auctioneer Michael March did not return multiple calls from the Gloucester Times seeking comment for this story.

Greer said he contacted March and asked to get the name and contact information of the buyer, so he could offer to buy it back. Greer said March told him he could not do that, in good conscience, since the purchase was through a private sale. He reportedly told Greer he would reach out to the buyer himself, and Greer said March told him he did, but the buyer wasn’t interested in selling — and that’s where things essentially stand today.

Greer said he’s disappointed that the bust was ever sold, and claims he always understood he could get it back from Earle at some point. Earle maintains that the bust’s ownership and ultimate sale was a case of misunderstanding.

“I had always thought he had given it me to have — as mine,” she said last week. “It’s all terribly sad; now, it’s come between us and cost us this wonderful friendship.”

She said she also holds out hope that the bust could be found and recovered.

“Wouldn’t that be a wonderful ending, if Mr. Greer could get his head back?” she said. “I hope it happens.”

So, of course, does Greer. He said anyone who knows its whereabouts can contact him at 510-508-6350.

“Let’s face it,” he said. “Wherever it is, wherever it winds up, I’m sure it will be around a lot longer than my head of original issue.”

Lamont writes for the Gloucester (Mass.) Times.