Long before Joe Biden stepped into the Oval Office as the 46th president, he was just another college kid on a spring break trip.
It was during one of these seemingly inconsequential moments that he met Neilia Hunter who would significantly shape the course of his life. The two met in the Bahamas while Joe was a law student and Neilia was studying at Syracuse University. According to Joe Biden’s own recount in his autobiography, Promises to Keep, it was a classic case of love at first sight.
When she turned toward me, I could see she had a beautiful smile and gorgeous green eyes. She was lit by the unforgiving journey of a full afternoon sun, and I couldn’t see a single flaw.
From Biden’s Promises to Keep memoir
You could indeed argue that Joe was probably the one on that beach thinking beyond sun and fun to life-altering commitments. Neilia Hunter was the daughter of successful diner owners and grew up in a nurturing, middle-class environment. She attended Penn Hall, a secondary boarding school in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, which was known for its rigorous academic environment.
Neila and Joe married in 1966, after which Neilia took on a significant role in his political career. She was actively involved in Joe’s campaign, managing phone banks, organizing volunteers, and balancing her career as a teacher. By the time 30-year-old Joe decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 1972, the couple had three children: Beau, Hunter, and Naomi. And it seemed like the beginning of a long, beautiful journey together.
Life, however, had other plans
Now, here’s where the story takes a gut-wrenching turn. It was a few weeks before Christmas, and Neilia, along with their three children, was out shopping for a Christmas tree. Tragedy strikes when their Chevrolet car is involved in a catastrophic collision with a tractor-trailer. The impact was so severe that the station wagon was thrown nearly 150 feet and landed on its roof. Neilia and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed instantly, while Beau and Hunter were severely injured but survived.
Losing Neilia and Naomi had a profound impact on Biden that he even considered suicide in the aftermath of the accident.
I began to understand how despair led people to just cash it in; how suicide wasn’t just an option but a rational option.
Joe Biden wrote in his Promises to Keep memoir
Somehow, Biden found the strength to carry on, if not for himself, then for his sons. Biden, at the age of 30, was sworn into the Senate at the hospital where his sons were recovering. He famously began commuting daily by train from Delaware to Washington, D.C., to be with his sons each night, a practice he continued throughout his long Senate career.
The accident itself was investigated, and though initial reports suggested that Neilia might have been at fault, these claims have been strongly disputed over the years, including by the truck driver involved, who himself suffered from guilt until his death in 1999.
In 1977, Joe Biden married Jill Tracy Jacobs, who helped to raise Beau and Hunter and became a loving stepmother to them. But he has never forgotten his first love, Neilia, whom he has often spoken about publicly.