This week marks the 50th anniversary of the death of President Joe Biden’s first wife and baby daughter, a tragedy that has defined the Delawarean’s personal and political life.
On the afternoon of Dec. 18, 1972, Neilia Biden, 30, pulled her Chevrolet station wagon to the then-stop sign at Valley and Limestone roads in Hockessin. She and her three young children had just gone shopping for a Christmas tree.
A tractor-trailer carrying corn cobs then plowed into the Biden family’s station wagon. The car went spinning, crashing into a row of evergreen trees. The windshield was shattered. The left rear door was smashed into the car.
Biden campaign literature was scattered in the street. Just six weeks earlier, Biden, then 29, won a stunning victory over Republican Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, a popular two-term incumbent.
Neilia, seen by many as the brains behind her husband’s earliest political victories, and Naomi, known as Amy, were dead on arrival at the hospital. Naomi was just 13 months old. Sons Beau and Hunter, then 4 and 3 years old, were seriously injured.
Biden was in Washington at the time. He was interviewing prospective staff.
Two weeks after the accident, Biden was sworn into office. He stood in the chapel of Wilmington Hospital, with news cameras flashing around him. Sons Beau and Hunter watched just feet away from their hospital beds.
Who is Neilia Biden?
Biden met Neilia, who grew up in New York’s Finger Lakes region, in 1964 on a beach while Biden was on a spring break trip in the Bahamas.
Neilia studied English at Syracuse University. She had been a homecoming queen and a dean’s list student. Biden was a junior at the University of Delaware, where he played football.
In his 2007 memoir, “Promises to Keep,” Biden wrote he quit football so he could spend weekends visiting Neilia. He also planned to go to law school at Syracuse for the same reason.
She earned a master’s degree in education from Syracuse and taught English and worked with children with cognitive disabilities.
“I guess the only time I got in trouble with my parents was when I wanted to marry Joe,” Neilia told The News Journal in an interview. “He was Irish Catholic and we were Scotch Presbyterian, but they liked him too much to say no.”
A LASTING LEGACY:Neilia Hunter Biden, the brains behind Joe Biden’s first victories
The couple married in 1966 and moved to Delaware to begin their family. Neilia, The News Journal reported at the time, had ambition to get her doctorate and teach at a college when her children were older.
When Biden first started his career in politics, she helped organize her husband’s campaigns. Neilia, a Republican, registered to become a Democrat.
When Biden was a New Castle County councilman, The News Journal likened the Bidens to the Kennedys.
“I don’t know the Kennedys, but I don’t think they could be half as great as the Bidens,” Neilia told The News Journal.
A HOLIDAY MYSTERY:Who is decorating 2 trees in Hockessin? Some wonder if there is a Biden crash connection.
How the Bidens remember
Grief and tragedy have come to define Biden as a politician and now as president. For the past 40 years, he has privately comforted grieving people in Delaware. He has been known to attend funerals, once for a woman who donated $18 to every one of his campaigns.
Neilia and Naomi Biden were buried in All Saints Cemetery off Kirkwood Highway, but the graves were later moved to the cemetery at St. Joseph’s on the Brandywine in Greenville, the Catholic church where the Biden family now worships. The Biden family plot there also includes the graves of Biden’s father, Joseph Sr.; his mother, Jean; and his elder son, Beau.
Neilia’s original flat headstone there reads, “Death lies on her like an early frost, upon the sweetest flower of all the field,” a slightly altered quote from Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet.”
DELAWARE’S OWN:Americans are grieving. Is Joe Biden uniquely qualified for this moment?
Five years after her death, the Neilia Hunter Biden park was dedicated in her honor. It’s tucked away in a hidden corner of the Brack-Ex-Roselle neighborhood near Elsmere. Biden represented the area when he served as a councilman.
Biden often visits the graves of his family members when he is back at his Greenville home, including on the anniversary of the car accident. A White House spokesman could not be reached to comment on if the president will return to Delaware this weekend.
First lady Jill Biden wrote in her 2019 memoir that Joe, Hunter and Beau visited the cemetery on the anniversary of the car accident. Each year, she bought a grave blanket with white roses, Neilia’s favorite flower, and then had a spread of food for the men when they returned from the cemetery.
In 2015, after Beau’s death, Jill wrote that she started accompanying Joe on his annual visit to Neilia’s gravesite.
“I owed her so much: my loyalty, my gratitude for the gift of these beautiful boys, and, yes, my love,” she said.
Remembrance is important to the family. Cardinals, which can often signify the presence of lost loved ones, are incorporated into the White House’s Christmas decorations this year.
The White House said the theme of “We the People” holiday decorations recognizes the profound impact of those who came before us.
