Joe Biden

In 1972, Biden's wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident. His two young sons were hospitalized with serious injuries. The accident happened a week before Christmas and six weeks after Biden had been elected one of the youngest U.S. senators ever.

One of his sons, Beau Biden, now 38, the attorney general of Delaware and the father of two children himself, recalls that his father said at the time: "Delaware can get another senator, but my boys can't get another dad."

"Those weren't just words," he added. "He lived them."

Beau Biden remembers that his father stayed constantly at the hospital with him and his brother. The boys recovered, and Biden's sister, Valerie, moved in to help care for them.

Biden wrote in his memoir that he told the then-Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield, that he wouldn't become a senator, but Mansfield persuaded him to give it at least a six-month try.

He began a daily commute by train — 80 minutes each way between Wilmington and Washington — rushing to get home in time for dinner, or at least dessert, and to tuck his children in at night and be there when they woke up. His son said that Biden put his children first, making sure he got to ball games and other important events.

Biden has never had a home in Washington. He's always made the commute.

Labels: barack obama, joe biden, politics, us elections

- posted by jaemark @ 8/24/2008 03:09:00 AM