Today marks the 50th anniversary of the fatal automobile accident that took the life of President Biden's first wife Neilia and their 13-month old daughter Naomi. Their two sons, Hunter and Beau were in the crash but survived. In a Yale Law School commencement speech on May 17, 2005, Biden described the devastating effect of him on that enormous tragedy, just days before he was sworn in a a freshman Senator:
"Six weeks after my election, my whole world was altered forever. While I was in Washington hiring staff, I got a phone call. My wife and three children were Christmas shopping, a tractor trailer broadsided them and killed my wife and killed my daughter. And they weren’t sure that my sons would live.
Many people have gone through things like that. But because I had the incredible good fortune of an extended family, grounded in love and loyalty, imbued with a sense of obligation imparted to each of us, I not only got help. But by focusing on my sons, I found my redemption.
I can remember my mother -- a sweet lady -- looking at me, after we left the hospital, and saying, Joey, out of everything terrible that happens to you, something good will come if you look hard enough for it. She was right.
The incredible bond I have with my children is the gift I’m not sure I would have had, had I not been through what I went through. Who knows whether I would have been able to appreciate at that moment in my life, the heady moment in my life, what my first obligation was."
One of his surviving sons is about to be the target of a vicious and dishonest inquisition by far-right House Republicans who want to damage Biden in the cynical way they used the 2015 Benghazi hearings to, as ambitious nitwit Rep. Kevin "Qevin" McCarthy told propagandist Sean Hannity, bring Hillary Clinton's poll numbers down.
(photo: Jessica Hill / AP)
