At that point, he wrote, he understood how suicide seemed a tempting option, though he knew he could never abandon Beau and Hunter with their mother and sister also gone. Joe immediately knew something terrible happenedĪs Joe recalled in Promises to Keep, he knew something terrible had happened after watching his sister answer the phone at his office that afternoon, a tangible feeling of Neilia's loss heightening when Valerie suggested they return home because of a "slight accident."Ī rushed flight back to Wilmington confirmed the worst of his suspicions, but Joe didn't have the opportunity to fully process his grief with his young sons still in uncertain condition. The two boys were luckier, though Beau sustained a broken leg and Hunter, a fractured skull. The family was pulled from the wreckage of the car and rushed to Wilmington General Hospital, but it was too late for Neilia and 13-month-old Amy, who were pronounced dead on arrival. She pulled the car past a stop sign and directly into the path of a tractor-trailer, headed full-steam along Route 7 to Pennsylvania.Īccording to reports, the impact sent the station wagon hurling some 150 feet into an embankment, leaving "Biden for Senator" campaign literature scattered in its wake. The answer came on December 18, a Monday that began with Joe heading to his temporary office in Washington, D.C., while Neilia remained at their new home in northeastern Delaware with the intention of tackling some Christmas shopping.Īt approximately 2:30 p.m., Neilia was driving westbound on rural Valley Road in Hockessin, the three children accompanying her in the family station wagon. The Bidens' car was hit by a truck the week before Christmas Joe Biden and first wife, Neilia, with sons Beau and Hunter, cut his 30th birthday cake at a party in Wilmington, Delaware on November 20, 1972 When the Election Day dust cleared, the not-yet-30-year-old challenger had become the second-youngest person ever elected to the Senate, leaving the Bidens to wonder what could possibly come next in their rapid rise in politics. Senate, serving as what her husband called the " brains" of the operation. Two years later, Neilia assumed a leading role in Joe's campaign against Republican J. Meanwhile, Joe's first attempt at politics proved successful with his election to the New Castle County Council in 1970. Neilia held down the fort as their life accelerated, giving birth to Joseph "Beau" Biden III in February 1969, Robert "Hunter" Biden in February 1970 and Naomi "Amy" Biden in November 1971. "We agreed on almost everything," he wrote, save for Neilia's hope that her husband set his sights on the U.S. Neilia served a crucial role in Joe's 1972 Senate campaignĪs their shared journey took them to Syracuse and then to Wilmington, the couple mapped out the goals that included Joe becoming a trial lawyer and then running for public office. And as their relationship progressed, her well-to-do parents overcame any misgivings about his politics (he's a Democrat, they were Republican) and religious faith (he's Catholic, they were Presbyterian).Īs such, the August 1966 wedding between Joe and Neilia appeared to be just an early milestone in their storybook romance, no one knowing their union would end in tragedy less than six-and-a-half years later. Joe found Neilia to be warm, bright and refreshingly down to earth, unbothered by his modest upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware. "She was lit by the unforgiving journey of a full afternoon sun, and I couldn't see a single flaw." "When she turned toward me, I could see she had a beautiful smile and gorgeous green eyes," he wrote in his memoir Promises to Keep. The University of Delaware junior had taken a spring break trip to the Bahamas and sneaked into an exclusive beach resort, where he came upon Syracuse University senior Neilia Hunter sunbathing by a pool. It was love at first sight for Joe Biden.
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