In 1972, Joe Biden received the call that his wife and daughter had passed away in a car accident, and the president has spoken about how it has affected him at length.
Joe Biden married his first wife in 1966 at the age of 23. He and Neilia met three years prior in 193 while they were both studying at Syracuse University. Despite graduating 76th of 85 in his class, he was ambitious and responded “president” when Neilia’s mom asked what his career intentions were. However, despite the couple graduating, having a successful start in life, and starting a family, heartbreak arrived in 1972 when his 30-year-old wife was killed.
Joe Biden’s first wife died tragically young
In 1972, just one week before Christmas, Joe Biden’s first wife, Neilia, passed away in a traffic accident. Both she and their eldest, a daughter named Naomi, died.
Naomi was just 13 months old, while her mom was 30.
Their two sons, Beau and Hunter, were also in the car and, despite being critically injured, both survived.
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Neilia is said to have been a big part of her husband’s political beginnings, and it was reported she was the “brains” behind his campaigns and his closest advisor. She died six weeks after Joe was elected to the US Senate. This followed a lot of campaigning across Deleware, where he said on the trail his Republican opponents were “old” and “out of touch.”
Neilia is devastatingly said to have asked Joe: “What’s going to happen, Joey? Things are too good,” after he won and sometime before her death.
She died on December 18 after, police determined, driving into the way of a tractor-trailer which she didn’t see it coming. Despite surviving the crash, Beau died 43 years later in 2015. He was 46 and had been suffering from a brain tumor which ultimately took his life.
Joe later married First Lady Jill in 1977, five years after the crash. They share a daughter named Ashley, who was born in 1981.
President opens up over his grief
The president has spoken openly about his heartache and grief after losing his first wife Neilia and eldest daughter in a car crash. In his 2017 book Promise Me, Dad, the 81-year-old wrote it took him a “long time to heal.”
“The pain… seemed unbearable in the beginning, and it took me a long time to heal, but I did survive the punishing ordeal. I made it through, with a lot of support, and reconstructed my life and my family,”he said.
After the loss, he commuted long distances to be with his two young sons every day after the tragedy, and it earned him the nickname Amtrak Joe.
He explained: “And I began to commute thinking I was only going to stay a little while – four hours a day, every day – from Washington to Wilmington, which I’ve done for over 37 years. I did it because I wanted to be able to kiss them goodnight and kiss them in the morning the next day…
“But looking back on it, the truth be told, the real reason I went home every night was that I needed my children more than they needed me.”
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