Joe Biden

In December 1972, not long after winning a U.S. Senate seat from one of Delaware’s oldest political hands, Joe Biden began traveling to Washington to introduce himself around town. Strapping and handsome, Biden had just turned 30, the minimum age to become a senator. Now, almost 50 years later, he is about to become the nation’s oldest president at 78. Back then, he was the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history, according to the Senate website. Worried people would think he was a congressional page, Biden stuck out his right hand to everyone he encountered, even elevator operators. “Hi, I’m Joe Biden,” he’d say, “the new senator from Delaware.” Biden’s wife, Neilia, usually accompanied him on these trips, sometimes with their three young children. She and his sister, Valerie, had run his campaign and got Joe, as friendly then as the world knows now, into homes across the tiny state for coffee with voters. The week before Christmas, as Biden set off on another trip to Washington, Neilia stayed home, getting the house ready for the holidays. That afternoon, Biden and Valerie sat working in an office loaned to them by Sen. Robert Byrd. The phone rang. Valerie took the call. “There’s been a slight accident,” she told Biden, as he later recalled in his memoir. “Nothing to be worried about, but we ought to go home.” The way she said it told a different story. “She’s dead,” he said, “isn’t she?” She was, along with their 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, ... (continued in biography field)