Who Was Joe Biden's First Wife ?: Meet Neilia Hunter, President-Elect's Family Tragedy
Young Delaware Senator's Devastating Losses Shaped Life and Career in Washington
Joe Biden's continued recovery from the trauma of the death of his first wife and his youngest daughter has dramatically shaped his career, from the way he speaks to crowds about grief and grief to his views. about health care.
While not unique to his type of politicking, the president-elect has framed his current ideas through the lens of his past.
While shopping just days before Christmas 1972, his 30-year-old wife, Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident after a truck with a trailer carrying corn collided with the Chevrolet pickup. of the family. Campaign propaganda featuring the young Delaware senator-elect covered the streets.
His two sons, Joseph "Beau" Biden III and Robert Hunter Biden, survived.
More than 40 years later, Beau died after a diagnosis of brain cancer.
The daughter of successful restaurant operators in upstate New York, Neilia Hunter was born on July 28, 1942, in the prosperous town of Skaneateles. She graduated from Penn Hall Preparatory School in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1960.
She was involved in French clubs, hockey, swimming and student council, and was the Penntonian's photography editor, and vice president and later president of the International Relations Club, according to her school's yearbook.
In 1963, Neilia, then a sophomore at Syracuse University, met Biden, then a junior at the University of Delaware, on Nassau Beach during spring break.
When she asked him about his career goals, Biden said to the mother of his future wife, "President." After earning his bachelor's degree from Delaware, Biden moved to Syracuse to study law. There, she Neilia earned her master's degree in English and taught special needs students.
They were married on August 27, 1966 while he was still enrolled in law school. He has called his time there "a dangerous combination of arrogance and carelessness" and eventually graduated 76th out of a class of 85.
After graduation, the couple moved to the suburb of Wilmington, where he practiced law and joined the New Castle County Council.
Although Neilia Hunter was a Republican, Neilia Biden registered as a Democrat, according to The News Journal.
The couple's first and only daughter, Naomi, was born on November 8, 1971, the youngest of three siblings, with two older siblings Beau and Hunter. She had the nickname "Amy".
A year later, Biden challenged Republican President J Caleb Boggs for a Delaware seat in the United States Senate.
Neilia became his closest adviser and the "brain" behind his campaign, The News Journal reported.
The family campaigned across the state, mounting a lucrative grassroots campaign attacking their Republican incumbent as old and disconnected, a shock to the status quo that highlights the generational divide between the rank and file of the older conservative statesman and a much younger electorate afterward. of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. It was also the first year 18-year-olds were able to vote.
The 30-year-old underdog Democrat won the race in November 1972.
The following month, Neilia asked her husband, “What's going to happen, Joey? Things are too good, "The News Journal reported.
A week before Christmas, the senator-elect was in Washington DC interviewing staff members in his new office when he received the news of the death of his wife and daughter.
After that phone call, "my whole world changed forever," Biden later said in a speech to Yale University graduates.
Police determined that Neilia accidentally got in the way of the tractor-trailer and did not see it coming.
About 1,200 people filled a memorial service for Neilia and Naomi, the Delaware State News reported.
In his 2017 book Promise Me, Dad, Biden wrote that “the pain seemed excruciating at first, and it took me a long time to heal, but I survived the ordeal. I did it, with a lot of support, and I rebuilt my life and my family ”.
He was officially sworn in at his children's bedside while they were still in the hospital.
The first-year senator had also planned for Neilia to organize his office on Capitol Hill, the Evening Journal reported.
Biden said in his Yale speech: "I can remember my mother, a sweet lady, looking at me, after we left the hospital, and saying, 'Joey, from everything terrible that happens to you, something good will come if you look hard enough.' ”.
With an intense and heartbreaking focus on his family, Biden began commuting from Washington to Delaware to stay with his young children. He earned him the nickname "Amtrak Joe".
"And I started traveling thinking that I would only stay a little while, four hours a day, every day, from Washington to Wilmington, which I have done for more than 37 years," he said in his Yale speech. “I did it because I wanted to be able to kiss them good night and kiss them in the morning the next day, but looking back, the real reason I went home every night was that I needed my kids more than they needed me. they needed me. "
Five years after the accident, Biden married Jill Jacobs, then a student at the University of Delaware. They met on a blind date.
The couple married on June 17, 1977 at the United Nations Chapel in New York City. Beau and Hunter attended both the ceremony and the honeymoon.
Hunter named his daughter Naomi after his younger sister.
In an interview with MSNBC in early 2020, he said that "hundreds of people hug me" to tell him about the loss of their sons, daughters and spouses and "all they want to know is what they can do."
"The way you do it is you find a purpose and you realize that they are within you," he said. “They are part of you. It is impossible to separate. "
