Joe Biden’s Large, Loving Family Has Endured Tragedy

The U.S. president-elect says the loss of his wife and daughter brought him closer to his children.
Ashley, Hunter and Beau Biden watch their father Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., in 2012. Beau's son, Robert Hunter, sits on his lap.
Streeter Lecka via Getty Images
Ashley, Hunter and Beau Biden watch their father Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., in 2012. Beau's son, Robert Hunter, sits on his lap.

Isn’t it nice not to have to think about the Trump offspring for a while?

There’s a new first family in Washington. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has been a politician long enough for his family story to be a known entity, and his son, Hunter, has been in the news quite a bit over the last few months.

Wife, daughter killed in car crash

Biden married his first wife, Neilia Hunter, in 1966, right after graduating from university. They quickly had three children: Joseph (known as Beau), Hunter, and Naomi (known as Amy).

Joe Biden with his wife, Neilia Hunter, on Nov. 20, 1972. That's Hunter in the middle.
Bettmann via Getty Images
Joe Biden with his wife, Neilia Hunter, on Nov. 20, 1972. That's Hunter in the middle.

Their kids were just three, two and one, respectively, when they got into a car crash while Christmas shopping in December 1972. Biden had just been elected a U.S. senator and was making preparations to hire staff when he got the call that a tractor-trailer hit Neilia’s car. Biden’s wife and daughter were killed, and Hunter and Beau were critically injured. Neilia was 30 years old and Amy was only one.

When Beau died of brain cancer in 2015, Hunter talked about this period of their lives while he delivered his brother’s eulogy.

“The first memory I have is of lying in a hospital bed next to my brother,” Hunter said. “I was almost three years old. I remember my brother, who was one year and one day older than me, holding my hand, staring into my eyes, saying, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’ over and over and over again.”

Biden talked about the tragedy during a very personal 2015 commencement speech at Yale University.

“Many people have gone through things like that,” he said. “But because I had the incredible good fortune of an extended family, grounded in love and loyalty, imbued with a sense of obligation imparted to each of us, I not only got help. But by focusing on my sons, I found my redemption.”

His sister, Valerie, and brother, Jimmy, were instrumental in helping the boys recover from the accident, according to The New Yorker. Biden also said the trauma of the loss brought him closer to his sons. Rather than moving to Washington, D.C., he commuted to the U.S. capital from Wilmington, Del., for 27 years.

“The incredible bond I have with my children is the gift I’m not sure I would have had, had I not been through what I went through,” he told the students.

Joe Biden holds his five-year-old daughter Ashley, flanked by his sons, Hunter and Beau, in 1987.
Bettmann via Getty Images
Joe Biden holds his five-year-old daughter Ashley, flanked by his sons, Hunter and Beau, in 1987.

“I came to realize that a child can hold an important thought, something they want to say to their mom and dad, maybe for 12 or 24 hours, and then it’s gone. And when it’s gone, it’s gone. And it all adds up,” he said.

“But looking back on it, the truth be told, the real reason I went home every night was that I needed my children more than they needed me.”

He remarried, had another daughter

In 1975, Biden’s brother, Frank, set him up on a blind date with Jill Jacobs, a teacher with two master’s degrees and a doctorate. When they met, Biden was shocked: He had seen Jacobs in a local ad in Wilmington and thought she was beautiful, having no idea he was about to go out with the same woman.

Joe Biden with his second wife, Jill, in 1987.
Rick Maiman via Getty Images
Joe Biden with his second wife, Jill, in 1987.
Joe and Jill Biden at Brandywine High School, where she taught English from 1991 to 1993, during the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention.
POOL New / Reuters
Joe and Jill Biden at Brandywine High School, where she taught English from 1991 to 1993, during the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention.

They married in 1977. Hunter and Beau were in their wedding, and joined them on their honeymoon, Jill Biden told the New York Times.

In 1981, they had a daughter, Ashley. Jill stayed home to raise her, and returned to work at a community college in the mid-90s.

Jill made it clear in a video played during the Democratic National Convention that she would keep working once she became First Lady, the same way she did during the eight years her husband was vice-president. She teaches at Northern Virginia Community College, and will continue to do so, making her the first First Lady to continue her professional career while her husband is president.

Jill Biden with her husband on the fourth night of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20, 2020.
Win McNamee via Getty Images
Jill Biden with her husband on the fourth night of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20, 2020.

In December, a Wall Street Journal opinion piece urged Jill to drop the title of “Doctor,” which she had earned with her doctorate of education.

In an interview a few days later, she told Stephen Colbert that she was “surprised” by the tone of the criticism.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is my doctorate,” she said. “I worked so hard for it.”

She also tweeted, “Together, we will build a world where the accomplishments of our daughters will be celebrated, rather than diminished.”

The op-ed was widely criticized as “atrocious,” “pretty gross,” and “outrageously sexist.”

Where are the kids now?

While the two Biden sons were close in age and very good friends, Beau Biden was always the more careful of the two, Hunter told The New Yorker.

“If we wanted to jump off a cliff into a watering hole, I would say, ‘I’m ready, let’s go,’ and Beau would say, ‘Wait, wait, wait, before we do it, make sure there aren’t any rocks down there.’”

Beau Biden, then attorney general of Delaware, at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Mark Wilson via Getty Images
Beau Biden, then attorney general of Delaware, at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Joe Biden with his grandson, Robert Hunter, at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 in Denver.
MCT via Getty Images
Joe Biden with his grandson, Robert Hunter, at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 in Denver.

After graduating from university, Beau went to law school, and was elected Delaware’s attorney general in 2006. He focused on making sure sex offenders got convicted, turning down the opportunity to run for a senate seat in order to convict a notorious rapist.

He enrolled in the U.S. military, and was deployed to Iraq in 2008 where he earned a Bronze Star.

Beau Biden with his father at Camp Victory on the outskirts of Baghdad on July 4, 2009.
AFP via Getty Images
Beau Biden with his father at Camp Victory on the outskirts of Baghdad on July 4, 2009.

He was expected to continue in politics. “I was pretty sure Beau could run for president some day, and, with his brother’s help, he could win,” Biden wrote in his 2017 book Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.

As Delaware’s attorney general, Beau worked with Kamala Harris, who was attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017. They became friends, which Biden said figured into his decision to choose Harris as a running mate.

“He had enormous respect for her and her work,” Biden wrote in a message to supporters announcing his pick for vice-president. “I thought a lot about that as I made this decision. There is no one’s opinion I valued more than Beau’s.”

In 2010, Beau had a stroke. Three years later, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died in 2015 at age 46, leaving behind his wife, Hallie, and two young children.

Beau’s daughter, Natalie, was 11 years old when he died and his son, Robert Hunter (known as Hunter), was only nine.

Then-president Barack Obama spoke at Beau’s funeral. “He did in 46 years what most of us couldn’t do in 146,” Obama said.

The day after Biden was elected U.S. president, he was seen visiting Beau’s grave in Delaware.

If you’ve been following the news even a little bit, you’ve likely heard about Hunter Biden, but it may not all be true.

The younger Biden son worked odd jobs through school, worked as a Jesuit volunteer, and then went to law school. He married Kathleen Buhle at age 22, and they had three kids: Naomi, named after Hunter’s late sister, along with Finnegan and Maisy.

He worked as a lawyer at a banking holding company and soon became its vice-president, but he found corporate culture stifling, he told the New Yorker. He started working for Bill Clinton’s administration, and then got into lobbying, and then consulting. He joined the U.S. navy in 2012.

Hunter Biden, then chairman of the World Food Program USA Board, with his father at the World Food Program USA's Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony in Washington, D.C., in April 2016.
Teresa Kroeger via Getty Images
Hunter Biden, then chairman of the World Food Program USA Board, with his father at the World Food Program USA's Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony in Washington, D.C., in April 2016.

Hunter has been open about his struggles with addiction. He started drinking as a teen, and moved on to cocaine as a university student. His wife, Kathleen, would ask him to stop drinking, suggesting he abstain for 30 days, he told the New Yorker. “And I wouldn’t drink for thirty days, but, on day thirty-one, I’d be right back to it.”

He went to rehab for alcohol addiction, and stayed sober for seven years before relapsing in 2010. He suffered another relapse a few months later. In 2013, he was discharged from the navy for failing a drug test — but it was not, as Donald Trump claimed in the first presidential debate, a dishonourable discharge.

Information about Hunter’s business relationships have also been exaggerated or falsified by parties with ties to disinformation networks.

Hunter and Kathleen divorced in 2017, and in 2019 he married South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen.

Joe Biden being sworn in as the U.S. vice-resident with his children Ashley, Hunter and Beau, on Jan. 20, 2009.
Jason Reed / Reuters
Joe Biden being sworn in as the U.S. vice-resident with his children Ashley, Hunter and Beau, on Jan. 20, 2009.

The youngest child, Ashley Biden, has always been close to her older brothers, according to her mother.

“From the minute she was born, her brothers looked after her,” Jill Biden told Delaware Today. “And, she always looked up to them. Wherever they went, she wanted to go, and they took her.”

Ashley spent 15 years as a social worker, developing programs for children in foster care and mental health clinics. Until last year, she was also executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice, which helps people get jobs and start over after leaving prison.

Joe Biden and his daughter, Ashley Biden, attend the Bloomberg and Vanity Fair cocktail reception following the 2015 WHCA Dinner on April 30, 2016.
Dimitrios Kambouris/VF16 via Getty Images
Joe Biden and his daughter, Ashley Biden, attend the Bloomberg and Vanity Fair cocktail reception following the 2015 WHCA Dinner on April 30, 2016.

She’s a defender of criminal justice reform and wants better mental health support and addiction treatment for people who commit crimes.

“We need to accept that most people are not inherently bad,” she told Delaware Today in a 2018 profile. “They simply don’t know another way and, if they do, they don’t have the means and support system to overcome the trauma, drug addiction, low-level education and income they’ve carried on their shoulders. We need to stop judging and come together to bring these incarcerated people back into society.”

Beau’s death galvanized Ashley, her mother also told the magazine.

“It was very important to Ashley, to carry on Beau’s legacy—the reforms in criminal justice, his work with children,” Jill said.

Ashley previously worked in fashion, starting “a socially and ethically conscious” brand called Livelihood.

You might also recognize her as the member of the Biden family who wouldn’t stop dancing after her father’s victory speech.

In 2012, Ashley married surgeon Howard Krein. They had been introduced by Beau.

Don’t forget the dogs

One of many ways Trump was an unusual U.S. president was that he didn’t have a dog. The Bidens have two German Shepherds, Major and Champ — and Major is making history by being the first presidential rescue dog.

It was Ashley who first came across Major at the Delaware Humane Society in 2018, according to Sky News. Her parents fostered him, then later adopted him. In January, Major will become the first rescue dog to live in the White House.

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