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Begin forwarded message:
From: Jason Miller <miller12@gwmail.gwu.edu>
Date: May 13, 2011 8:31:39 AM EDT
To: Biden Beau <261penn@gmail.com>
Cc: Joe Rogalsky <joerogalsky@gmail.com>, Alex Snyder-Mackler <smacklera@gmail.com>
Subject: Column on you in today's Syracuse paper
Sean Kirst's very good profile column on you and your speech ran today
in the Syracuse Post-Standard. Text copied below - online at
http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/index.ssf/2011/05/post_157.html.
*****
Beau Biden might share a tale from his childhood today in the Carrier
Dome. The attorney general of Delaware will be commencement speaker
for the Syracuse University College of Law, and the story packs in
much of what he wants to say:
When Beau was a boy, he’d often travel around Auburn with his
grandfather, Bob Hunter. As they drove through the neighborhoods of
that small city, Bob would sometimes pull the car to a quick stop.
He'd tell Beau he had to check on a friend. Soon enough, he’d come
back and they'd again be on their way, and it took Beau a long time to
realize what his grandfather was doing.
For years, Bob and his wife Louise ran Hunter's Dinerant, an Auburn
restaurant that served as a kind of civic living room. “It was the
place where the community met to talk and where the kids went after a
dance and a place where people went to be with their families,” Beau
said. It was also a haven for solitary men and women, eager for
conversation, and Beau appreciates now why his grandfather made those
stops:
He was checking on old friends and customers, who were alone.
“Clearly, they helped shape my sense of what’s important in life,”
Beau said of the Hunters, who died in the early 1990s. “There’s always
something bigger than you.”
It is a point he wants today’s graduates to understand. Beau is a 1994
graduate of SU’s law school, but the degree is just one element of
what brings him back. The life of William Robinette “Beau” Biden III —
attorney general of Delaware and veteran of the war in Iraq — is bound
in a profound way to Central New York.
He is the eldest son of Vice President Joe Biden. Beau’s father and
his mother, Neilia Hunter Biden, lived in Syracuse during the first
years of their marriage, when Joe was a student at the school of law.
Neilia grew up in Auburn and attended SU. She met Joe when they were
on spring break in the Bahamas. A few years later, as newlyweds, they
had a Stinard Avenue apartment. While Joe attended law school, Neilia
would walk to her job as a teacher at nearby Bellevue Academy.
Once Joe graduated, the couple moved to Delaware to raise their
family. In 1972, Joe became the youngest candidate ever elected to the
U.S. Senate. He was in Washington on a December day, preparing to take
office, when Neilia took their three children for a ride to get a
Christmas tree. The car was hit by a tractor-trailer. Neilia and
Naomi, the couple’s infant daughter, were killed in the collision.
Beau, then 4, was placed in traction with a broken leg. His younger
brother, Hunter, suffered a head injury.
Joe Biden faced a stark choice, Beau said: “Families can get torn
apart and never recover or they grow even closer. My dad set about
rebuilding his family.”
Beau’s aunt, Valerie Biden Owens, moved in to help care for the
children. Joe would eventually get remarried, to Dr. Jill Tracy Biden.
“I was a lucky, lucky boy to have the mom I had and the mom I have
now,” said Beau, who recalls how Joe and Jill made sure the boys
stayed close to the Hunter family. Beau and Hunter returned each
summer to visit relatives and to stay with their grandparents, first
in Skaneateles and then at Owasco Lake. “We’d always come into
Syracuse for the Empire State Games and the stair fair,” Beau said.
Years later, as a college student, he accompanied his father on a
visit to SU’s college of law, an event that attained almost spiritual
meaning. “It was one of those rare sunny, sunny late winter days (in
Syracuse) when you get a taste of spring,” Beau said. He stopped by
Kappa Alpha Theta, the sorority to which Neilia had once belonged.
Beau found a photo of his mom, as an SU homecoming queen, still
hanging on the wall.
That’s all it took. He knew he would go to law school at Syracuse.
Beau will speak today about the enduring strength of that connection.
While it’s been almost 40 years since he lost his mother, he still
encounters Central New Yorkers who remember Neilia’s kindness, her
sense of grace. He said his own recollections of his mom are often
triggered by blue water: Neilia Biden was a skilled water skier, and
Beau can picture her gliding along Skaneateles Lake.
While those memories are intertwined with shattering loss, Beau said
he and Hunter were always “enveloped in love,” which leads to a
message he will share in the Dome. He doesn’t want young lawyers to
believe winning is everything, or that “the end always justify the
means.” He spoke of larger priorities in life — such as honoring a mom
and sister who weren’t there as you grew up, or emulating grandparents
who tended to the lonely.
“It’s about family,” said Beau, which is what he feels in every brick
of the walls at SU Law.