No UInputComponent, no motioncontroller input, after respawning VR pawn?

I've been banging my head against this for several days now.  I'm trying to set up VR multiplayer, and I run into this problem where my player loses all input when I respawn him.  This happens at the very beginning, in the lobby, when I am just trying to choose between several characters.  On EventPostLogin I spawn the initial Pawn. Then later, I try to respawn it by destroying the old actor and spawning a new one.  The new one does not have a UInputComponent for some reason. 

Is there something special about the VR character that you cannot make a new pawn?  Why would the new character not have a UInputComponent?  Anyone know how I can respawn my VR player character?