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Owens' Reach Goes Far Beyond "Vice Sister" (WILNJ)

By Maureen Milford

Wilmington News Journal<http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20101114/NEWS02/11140374/>, November 14, 2010

The day before a 27-year-old Valerie Biden Owens helped power her older brother to a political upset over revered Senate incumbent J. Caleb Boggs, she assessed her skills as manager of Joe Biden's first Senate campaign.

"I think I knew the mechanical things you must do to win," Owens said on Nov. 6, 1972, as she sat in her downtown Wilmington campaign office decorated with maps labeled "coffee regions" and "district lines for Sussex County," plus an organizational flow chart.

Considering her brother has ascended to the vice presidency of the United States -- with Owens by his side all the way -- that seems incredibly modest. But those who know Owens best say there's a lot of truth in what she said 38 years ago.

"Her mind thinks in a different way than other people," said Claire DeMatteis, senior counsel to Sen. Biden for 10 years and who has known Owens since 1994. "She has the big picture in mind and yet can focus on the little details. That's very unique."

While her brother is the most visible example of her strategic and tactical talents -- Owens managed every campaign since Biden ran for New Castle County Council -- she has put her gifts to work in other ways. Not only has she successfully worked on other national campaigns in her 12 years as executive vice president with media consultant Joe Slade White and Co., but she has also traveled internationally with Women's Campaign International to train women in emerging democracies. Through all this, Owens has devoted nearly three decades to the Ministry of Caring in Wilmington, an ecumenical agency that has 23 programs for the poor and needy.

Now, Brother Ronald Giannone, executive director of the ministry, thinks it's time Owens got a little public recognition. Owens will become one of a rare group to receive the Sister Ann Marguerite Gildea Award. Other recipients include MBNA Bank founder Charles M. Cawley and his wife, Julie Cawley.

The award, which also functions as a fundraiser, will be presented Tuesday night at the Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington at a $250-a-plate tribute dinner. The vice president said he'll be there. As of the middle of last week, 410 tickets had been sold and more than $500,000 raised for the ministry.

"She's truly an unsung hero," Giannone said.

Said Biden: "Valerie believes there isn't anything she can't do. She does it spontaneously."

Avoiding attention

Still, Owens, 65, is a reluctant honoree.

"It's humbling, almost embarrassing," said Owens, who lives in Kennett Square, Pa.

Although Owens has kept up a stock narrative since 1972 about her tomboy childhood as her brother's sidekick and now refers to herself as the "vice sister," Giannone said that's all done to deflect attention.

"She's a very private person," said Bernadette Buccini, chief executive of E.J. DeSeta company and a former ministry board member.

Owens, a mother of four, has never sought the limelight, Buccini and other friends say. Those who have known her for years say Owens always throws the glory on other people. When talking about the ministry tribute, she changes the conversation to the many contributions Giannone has made to the community. As for her greatest accomplishment in her years on the ministry's board, she describes it as enlisting the go-getter Buccini to the cause.

"Let me just tell you this; Valerie has been a blessing to the board," said Buccini, who served on the board for nearly 20 years. "She's like a saint. I really mean that."

When Sen. Ted Kaufman began singing Owens' praises at a recent lunch, saying Owens was Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Delaware, she gently corrected him. "No, I was dean's list," she said.

That self-effacing quality has been true her whole life, friends say.

"I can't say she's someone who grandstanded. She was just a regular person," said Lyn Doto, who graduated from Ursuline Academy in 1963 with Owens.

"She's never put herself out there: Here I am. It was always: Here I am on behalf of somebody else," said Sonny Sloan of Wilmington, who has known Owens since 1970, when she worked on Biden's County Council race.

To Giannone, Owens has always been content to "do good and disappear."

When it came time to honor Owens, Giannone said, he had to remind her of all the things she accomplished. He ended up "begging her" to accept the tribute, he said.

"She said: What did I do?" Giannone said.

But Giannone has little trouble running off a list of Owens' accomplishments since she joined the ministry's board of directors in 1982. Her first act was to chair a cocktail party fundraiser in 1983 with her brother in attendance that led to the establishment of an Emmanuel Dining Room on the west side of Wilmington.

Another accomplishment was to secure food donations from restaurants, caterers and hotels for the dining room. That required the passage of state legislation to exempt food donors from liability.

Jacques Amblard, who at the time was food and beverage manager at the Hotel du Pont, said he was struck by Owens' practicality when she approached the hotel.

"She was very clear in the expected results," Amblard said.

Family a big influence

Giannone and Biden freely admit that over the years Owens has been the fair wind at their backs.

Owens links up both men frequently in her conversation, referring to "Brother Joe and Brother Ronald," as if they were twins.

"She believed in me," Giannone said.

That sums his sister up perfectly, Biden said.

"Val has this thing," Biden said. "If she decides she believes in you, she has this incredible ability to make you believe in yourself."

Biden recalled that after his decision in 1987 to drop out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination when his campaign became overwhelmed by allegations of plagiarism, his sister arrived with a morale booster.

"She came over to the house and she had had a poster made up. I still have it," Biden said. "It was white on a gray background and it said: 'Quality has no fear of time.' At that time, I was being called a lying, cheating son of a gun."

Perhaps Owens' gifts can be traced to her childhood in a big, close-knit Irish Catholic family, said her nephew, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.

The second child of the late Catherine Eugenia "Jean" and Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., Owens remembers a house always filled with family and friends.

"Somebody always came for a weekend and stayed for six months," Owens said. "Everybody was at our house all the time."

Today, she marvels at the generosity of her parents, who opened their modest three-bedroom home in Mayfield to guests despite having four children. But for Owens, having the influence and love of aunts and uncles was "a real gift."

"It wasn't gracious. It wasn't elaborate, but it was a generous home," Owens said.

Owens said their openness is a tribute to the "grandness" of her father and mother. Beau Biden describes his grandfather, a car salesman, as dapper and elegant -- a quality picked up by Owens. Even when doing campaign grunt work, Owens is always impeccably turned out, Doto said.

One of the house guests in the Biden home was Owens' bachelor uncle, Edward Finnegan, whom they called "Uncle Boo Boo." The brother of Jean Finnegan Biden, Uncle Boo Boo fulfilled one of his niece's dreams -- he paid for Owens to go to Ursuline. Another uncle, Frank Biden, the brother of Biden Sr., also moved in with senior Bidens, Beau Biden said.

Mutual admiration

Owens has repeated the story many times about how from the moment she was born in Boston, her older brother Joey was happy to let her tag along with him even though she was three years younger.

To friends, it's an amazing relationship. Biden said the rule was "like me, like my sister." One time when they were living in Arden, they built a fort in the woods with some other kids. When it was all done, some of the boys said no girls were allowed.

"I said, 'Come on, Val, let's go build our own fort,'" Biden said.

Owens is no less faithful, friends say.

"She's loyal. Oh, my gosh, is she loyal," said Wilmington lawyer Mike Kelly.

An example of that came in 1990, when a flier for Biden's Senate campaign misused some published quotes. When questioned about it by the press, Owens said: "This was all my fault."

Those who have known Owens for years said she clearly worshipped her brother going back to childhood. Decades later, Doto can recall being in the student lounge at the University of Delaware and talking to a very excited Valerie Biden. Owens' brother was coming home from Syracuse, N.Y., where he was attending law school.

The admiration is mutual.

"She has been my closest best friend and confidante, the person whose judgment I respected more than anybody else," Biden said. "She has this sixth sense. Val is the first one to say: That guy doesn't mean what he says. She can really read human nature."

When Biden's wife Neilia and baby daughter Naomi were killed in a car accident that also injured sons Beau and Hunter in December 1972, Owens moved in to help raise the kids. Now, she jokes that she practiced her child-rearing skills on them.

"I have great, great memories of my aunt. From the moment of the accident and then on, she was there," Beau Biden said. "Everybody can point to a family tragedy. One of two things happens. They either get closer together or they get torn apart. We were a pretty close family to begin with, and we got even closer. My aunt was a big part of that."

Owens taught social studies at Wilmington Friends School but left to work on Biden's first Senate campaign. During the campaign of 1972, she was married to Bruce Saunders, who served as the campaign's budget director. They divorced.

Today, Owens said, she's lucky to have a husband who understands her close ties with her big family. In 1975, she married John T. "Jack" Owens, a friend of Biden's and a lawyer who went to Syracuse law school.

"I'm fortunate to marry a guy who knows who he is," she said.

Owens gained a stepson with the marriage, Jade, 39, of Sacramento. Jade and his wife, Christine, have a 3-year-old son, Jackson.

Together, Valerie and Jack Owens had three children: Valerie "Missy," 34, of Washington, D.C; Cuffe, 31, of Los Angeles; and Catherine "Casey," 27, of Washington.

As for the tribute from the ministry, Biden laughingly relates that his sister told him he didn't have to attend. He responded that Owens has been there for him every step of the way -- and he'll be there for her.

"I'm not a hero," Owens said. "I just do what has to be done."

While Giannone is convinced Owens could have been a chief executive of a Fortune 500 company or a US senator or vice president of the United States, she chose a different path, he said. At Ursuline, the school motto was "Serviam," which is Latin for "I will serve."

"I think Valerie has lived that," Doto said.