‘Honour made him role model’
American political dynasties – the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons – draw much of their strength from a pervasive sense of entitlement.
In the case of Beau Biden, oldest son of vice-president Joe Biden, there was no weight of expectation. Whatever he achieved, he achieved on his own, with nothing more than a warm smile of approval from his father. A skilled lawyer, the younger Biden became a crusading attorneygeneral of Delaware, the smallest state of the Union, working on important cases until the cancer that killed him made it impossible for him to continue.
At the same time, following a tradition more of the Democratic party than the Republicans, he was an active legal officer in the Delaware National Guard, serving for a year in Iraq. His life, which reached its close in the Walter Reed hospital for veterans in Washington DC, had almost ended 43 years before, in a car crash that killed his mother, Neilia (nee Hunter), and younger sister Naomi. Neilia Biden was out doing Christmas shopping with her children when her car was struck by a tractor and trailer as she pulled out too fast from a junction. Beau, aged four, and his two-year-old brother Hunter survived the collision, though both spent many months in hospital recovering from their injuries. Joe Biden, who had just been elected a senator for Delaware, was traumatised by what happened and came close to abandoning his political career in order to care for his boys. Each day, he would commute from the family home in Wilmington to the hospital where Beau was recovering from various injuries, including a badly broken leg, and Hunter from a skull fracture.
In the end, he was persuaded to continue, and, three weeks later, during an emotionally charged ceremony, the brothers watched their father take his oath of office. Joseph Robinette Beau Biden was born in 1969. Having lost his mother when no more than a toddler, he and his brother were said to have encouraged their father to find a new wife, which, after five years as a single father, he did, marrying Jill Jacobs, a special needs teacher, now the US second lady, in June 1977.
She proved to be a devoted stepmother, and the boys and their newly arrived half-sister Ashley were raised in Wilmington to respect the blue-collar, suburban values of their grandparents. They were removed from the peculiar culture and everyday intensity of the Washington Beltway.
Beau proved to be an able scholar, graduating from his father’s old high school, Archmere Academy and going to study law at Syracuse University, alma mater of both his father and stepmother. As a lawyer, his ambition was to acquire as wide a range of experience as quickly as possible.
He worked for the department of justice in Philadelphia, then at the office of policy development. In 2004, he accepted a partnership at a Wilmington law firm specialising in personal injury claims, and then, in 2006, ran for attorney-general of Delaware, winning against the odds by five percentage points.
Three years previously, following the invasion of Iraq, which he opposed, Biden joined the Delaware National Guard, knowing that he would almost certainly have to spend time in the war zone. This duly happened, and in 2008, having been promoted to the rank of major, he was sent with his unit to Iraq, where he remained for the next 12 months, interrupting his service only when he flew back to Washington to witness his father’s swearing-in as vice-president.
‘‘I don’t want him going,’’ was Biden Sr’s response to his son’s deployment.
‘‘But I tell you what, I don’t want my grandson or my granddaughters going back [to Iraq] in 15 years, so how we leave makes a big difference.’’
In his absence, Biden had turned over his duties as attorney-general to his deputy. But on his return to Delaware, he threw himself into a raft of legislative action, mostly aimed at reducing corruption, but also establishing an effective register of sex offenders. In 2010, he was re-elected, but turned down a third term of office in order to stand as state governor. It was at this time that he was diagnosed with brain cancer.
Biden is survived by his wife Hallie, a school admissions counsellor, and his two young children Natalie and Hunter, as well as by his brother Hunter and his half-sister Ashley. His father said: ‘‘His absolute honour made him a role model for our family.’’