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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