Biden honors the memory of his first wife and daughter, who died in an accident in 1972

President Joe Biden on Wednesday honored the memory of his first wife and daughter, who died exactly 52 years ago in a car accident in Delaware.

Biden’s wife, Neilia, 30, had taken her children — one-year-old daughter Naomi and sons Beau and Hunter — to buy a Christmas tree when the vehicle she was driving was hit by a truck. tow. Neilia and Naomi died. Beau, 3, and Hunter, 2, were seriously injured.

The president, his current wife, Jill, their son Hunter and other family members attended a private church service Wednesday morning at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic Church, near Biden’s Delaware home.

After the mass, Jill Biden took the hand of Beau, Hunter’s youngest son, and accompanied the rest of the family on a walk to the cemetery behind the church where the graves are located.

Biden often speaks about his personal loss, and just last week he told his story again. He said he was in Washington with then-Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, when he received a phone call.

“I received a call from my local fire department to inform me that an accident had occurred,” he said during a dinner at the White House attended by members of the Kennedy family. “And the poor firefighter who talked to me said—I asked her, ‘How are you?’ And she said, ‘Eh, eh, well, she died. Your daughter is dead. And I’m not sure his two children are going to survive.’”

Biden, who had been elected as a senator just weeks before the accident, talks about how he almost gave up on his legislative career before it even began. But he followed the advice of other senators, was sworn in at the hospital bed where his children lay, and traveled daily by train between Delaware and Washington.

Next month, Biden will conclude the latest chapter of a nearly 50-year political career that includes 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president and four years as president.

His openness about his grief and how he handled it, and his ability to empathize with others who have experienced loss, have become one of the hallmarks of his long political career.

Biden married Jill Jacobs in 1977, and she helped him raise Beau and Hunter as his own. The couple later had their daughter Ashley.

Decades after the fatal car accident, Biden faced a new personal loss while vice president, when Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46. Beau Biden is also buried in the cemetery of that same church.

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