Senate, which sustained him when his home life was torn apart and where he served for nearly four decades.īiden spoke eloquently about that earlier tragedy at a commencement address at Yale University just a couple of weeks ago. It pulsates through his politics and is at the root of his love affair with the U.S. READ: Beau Biden, son of vice president and former Delaware AG, dies at 46īiden’s daily commute between Washington and Wilmington to be with young sons Beau and Hunter became the stuff of political legend and earned him the nickname ‘Amtrak Joe.’īut in a deeper sense, his personal tribulations cemented in Biden an almost mystical reverence for family. In a famous photo at the time, Biden was seen being sworn into the chamber in his sons’ hospital room.

Stricken with grief back then, Biden contemplated vacating the Delaware Senate seat he had just won as a young rising star of the Democratic Party, but his decision to endure became the foundation on which he built his political creed and public service. It’s particularly heartrending because Beau, 46, was also a victim of an earlier incident that shattered Biden’s life, a car crash at Christmas in 1972 that killed his first wife and an infant daughter and badly injured another son as well as Beau. In the latest personal devastation, the Vice President must now endure the torment of burying a second child, after his beloved son Beau died from brain cancer Saturday night.

Tragedy has not just afflicted Joe Biden, it has shaped his political soul.

Joe biden's first wife pic