By 1970, he had his first taste of politics, winning election to the New Castle County Council, where he served until 1972, when he challenged the likeable, 63-year-old, two-term Senator J. They married in 1966 and had three children, Beau (1969), Hunter (1970), and Naomi (1971), who was known as Amy.Īfter graduating from Syracuse University Law School in 1968, Joe first took a job with a corporate law firm defending big businesses but soon realized the work was not right for him, and he became a public defender whose clients were nearly all African Americans from Wilmington’s East Side. On his spring break in 1964, he met Neilia Hunter, a Syracuse University student. The job opened Biden’s eyes to the stark difference in the lives of Black and white Americans: “Every day, it seemed to me, Black people got subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that they did not quite belong in America,” Biden wrote in his memoir. He was the only white lifeguard among a dozen inner-city African Americans who were students at historically Black colleges. During college, Biden took a summer job as a lifeguard at a public swimming pool near a housing project. When Biden began his freshman year at the University of Delaware in 1961, he already had law school in his sights and a dream of becoming “an esteemed public figure,” as he put it in his memoir.

By sheer will, he conquered the stutter, though it has crept back on him now and then throughout his life. He turned himself into a star halfback known for his skill at reeling in passes and earned the nickname “Hands,” which replaced the bullying epithets. “I wanted so badly to prove I was like everybody else.” At Archmere, Biden was outgoing and athletic and relied on sports to distract attention away from his stutter.

“Other kids looked at me like I was stupid,” Biden recalled. “Dot-dot- dot-dot-dash-dash-dash-dash.” His stutter put the fighting spirit in him, and he shouted down the bullies: “You gu-gu-gu-gu-guys sh-sh-sh-sh-shut up!” He practiced hard in his bedroom, watching his lips in the mirror with a flashlight while memorizing Yeats and Emerson so he could speak flawlessly in class. “I talked like Morse code,” Biden explained in his memoir, Promises to Keep. His classmates tarred him with the nickname “Dash,” for the way sounds came off his lips. Joe Jr.’s tribulations dogged him into high school at the Archmere Academy, a private Catholic school for boys. landed a job selling cars in Wilmington, Delaware, and moved the family into an apartment in the suburb of Claymont. As author Richard Ben Cramer told the story, “By the time he got to the top, the five bucks wasn’t the point anymore. But Joe took the gamble and scrambled up the side of the black mountain. The two-hundred-foot mountain-made up of waste material from coal mine shafts-was hot and dangerous along its surface were invisible ash pockets that could collapse with a footstep, dropping a foolhardy young kid into the burning center. In industrial Scranton, at around age ten, he accepted a $5 dare from a local kid to climb to the top of a culm mountain. The effort toughened him and endowed him with prodigious confidence that sometimes veered into recklessness. Kindergarten speech therapy did not work so he decided to fight his battle on his own. He endured bullies and the shame that accompanies the affliction. had been joined by his sister Valerie two brothers, James and Frank, would complete the family.Īs a child, Joe Jr. After a couple of failed business ventures, he returned to the coal-mining town of Scranton where he took what work he could get to support the family. But after the war, his fortunes reversed, and Joe Sr. left Scranton to run the Boston office he lived the high life, driving fast cars, hunting, and haunting the polo fields. Biden’s father prospered during the war when an uncle gave him a job in his lucrative manufacturing company that provided sealant for merchant marine ships. The first child of Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., Joey, as he was known, was a scrappy kid from a working-class Irish Catholic family. was born on November 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as World War II raged overseas.

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