| New York Times | - |
WASHINGTON
- Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the
eldest son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the eldest son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., has died of brain cancer, his father announced on Saturday. The younger Mr. Biden was 46.
Mr. Biden had spent more than a week receiving treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington.
In
a statement Saturday night, the vice president said: “It is with broken
hearts that Hallie, Hunter, Ashley, Jill and I announce the passing of
our husband, brother and son, Beau, after he battled brain cancer with
the same integrity, courage and strength he demonstrated every day of
his life.”
“In the words of the Biden family: Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.”
In
2010, the younger Mr. Biden, known as Beau, had suffered what officials
described as a mild stroke. Three years later, he was admitted to the
University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after what White House officials described at the time as “an episode of disorientation and weakness.”
Officials said in 2013 that the doctors in Texas had removed a small lesion from his brain.
Mr.
Biden’s death marks a second tragic loss for the vice president, whose
first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a
car accident in 1972 when the station wagon they were driving in to go
Christmas shopping was hit by a tractor-trailer. Beau Biden and his
brother, Hunter, were also injured in the crash, but both survived.
A
popular Democratic politician in his home state who was known to be
very close to his father, Mr. Biden served two terms as Delaware’s top
law enforcement official before announcing last year that he would not
run for a third term so he could make a bid for governor in 2016.
“What
started as a thought — a very persistent thought — has now become a
course of action that I wish to pursue,” Mr. Biden wrote in an open
letter to his constituents in April 2014.
As
recently as late February, some Delaware politicians close to Mr. Biden
told news organizations that they still believed Mr. Biden planned to
run for governor in 2016.
But Mr. Biden’s health had apparently declined in recent weeks, and he was taken to Walter Reed on May 20.
Born
on Feb. 3, 1969, in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden was an energetic
politician whose broad smile mirrored that of his father. He appeared to
be a natural to follow his father’s path toward national political
success.
A
lawyer by training, Mr. Biden joined the Delaware National Guard in
2003, serving as a major in the Judge Advocate General Corps. His unit
was deployed to Iraq in 2008, while his father was running for vice
president.
In a short, emotional speech introducing his father at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Mr. Biden recalled the tragedy that had touched his family, describing the moments after the crash.
“One
of my earliest memories was being in that hospital, Dad always at our
side. We, not the Senate, were all he cared about,” Mr. Biden said. “He
decided not to take the oath of office. He said, ‘Delaware can get
another senator, but my boys can’t get another father.’ However, great
men like Ted Kennedy, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey — men who had been
tested themselves — convinced him to serve. So he was sworn in, in the
hospital, at my bedside.”
Many
in Delaware expected Mr. Biden to run for his father’s Senate seat
after the 2008 election, but the younger Biden, who was elected attorney
general in 2006, declined, saying he was still needed in his state as
he pressed ahead on a major child molestation case his agency was
pursuing against a pediatrician.
“I
have a duty to fulfill as attorney general, and the immediate need to
focus on a case of great consequence. And that is what I must do.”
He ran for re-election in 2010, serving a second term before deciding to seek higher office.
Mr. Biden is survived by his wife, Hallie, and two children, Natalie and Hunter.
President
Obama said in a statement that he was grieving for the vice president
and his family. “For all that Beau Biden achieved in his life, nothing
made him prouder, nothing made him happier, nothing claimed a fuller
focus of his love and devotion than his family,” Mr. Obama said. “Just
like his dad.”
He
called the vice president “one of the strongest men” he had ever known
and quoted the poet William Butler Yeats. “I have believed the best of
every man,” Yeats wrote, “and find that to believe it is enough to make a
bad man show him at his best or even a good man swing his lantern
higher.”
“Beau Biden believed the best of us all. For him, and for his family, we swing our lanterns higher.”
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