President Joe Biden on Saturday commemorated the 49th anniversary of the car crash that killed his first wife and infant daughter, visiting their graves at the Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church.
Their deaths occurred just after Delaware voters elected Biden to the Senate in 1972 and the fatal car crash became a defining moment that has shaped his persona and career.
His sons Beau and Hunter, just under 4 and 3 at the time, were seriously injured but survived the crash. His wife Neilia and 13-month-old daughter Naomi died after their car was broadsided while they were en route to pick up a Christmas tree.
The tragedy haunted him at the start of his Senate career and has been a touchstone of his presidency, with Biden recently opening a speech in Minnesota by noting how two of that state’s former senators helped him cope.
Biden married Jill Jacobs in 1977 and they added daughter Ashley to the family. Both joined him at the church Saturday, as did Hunter and his family among others. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.
(AP)
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4 Responses
May they rest in peace
So that was why he thought it was OK to commit adultery with his present wife, on his best friend????
The crash that he lied about for years? For years he used to viciously slander the truck driver, falsely accusing him of having been drunk. Even now he doesn’t acknowledge that the crash was his wife’s fault.
It’s also not clear when he started up with his current wife; he used to lie that he didn’t even know her until after his first wife died, but we now know that he did. So did he start up with her before or after the crash? We know they were cheating on her husband, but were they also cheating on his wife? One must wonder whether perhaps he made his first wife so miserable that she deliberately drove her car into the truck’s path.
Wonder what childhood tragedy scarred your life so much that you feel a need to write these foolish comments about someone visiting the graves of his first wife and child.
Why not write about the behavior of the prior guy or does your Messiah get an exception?