Long before Joe Biden’s 2025 cancer diagnosis, he had suffered major life calamities with two family tragedies that shaped his personal and political life. As a University of Delaware student on spring break in 1964, Biden on a whim flew from Fort Lauderdale to Nassau—it was his first plane flight—and, as he told biographer Jules Witcover, “that trip changed everything.” In Nassau, he met Neilia Hunter, a Syracuse University student, and fell in love at first sight. The next weekend, he traveled to Syracuse and sat in Neilia’s dorm lobby until he saw her. “You know what he said?” Neilia revealed afterward to a friend. “He told me he’s going to be a senator by the time he’s thirty. And then, he’s going to be president.” They married in 1966. Their son Beau was born in 1969, followed by Hunter in 1970, and Naomi, or Amy as the family called her, in 1971.

On December 18, 1972, after Biden won an unexpected victory in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat, he was in Washington making preparations when Neilia took the children Christmas shopping in Wilmington. As she pulled the station wagon into an intersection, a tractor trailer smashed into the driver’s side, knocking the car 150 feet down the road and into a ditch. Neilia and baby Amy were dead on arrival at Wilmington Medical Center. Beau suffered numerous bone fractures, requiring a full body cast to heal them. Hunter sustained head injuries.

Biden wasn’t sure he should accept his Senate seat, but colleagues there, especially Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), no stranger to family tragedies, urged him to stay and eased him through his emotional crisis. Biden’s love of the institution can be traced to the compassion both Republican and Democratic senators showered upon him: the Senate became his family. Biden agreed to a six-month trial as a new senator, but he would live at home in Delaware and return each evening by train to be with his sons, earning himself a sobriquet, “Amtrak Joe,” that added to his populist image.

In 1975, Biden met Jill Jacobs, a student at the University of Delaware almost nine years his junior. She embraced the Biden family, and Beau and Hunter adored her, prompting the boys to advise their father: “We think we should marry Jill.” The couple was married in 1977. Their daughter Ashley was born in 1981. Jill was instrumental in rebuilding the family, raising Beau and Hunter as her own sons.

Biden’s second family tragedy came in 2015 when Beau died of brain cancer in May. Biden had been contemplating a presidential bid in 2016 but now wavered on whether he had the strength for a campaign. In August 2015, Biden had gained his strongest position in the polls in six months. His favorability numbers were higher than those of anyone running in either party, including Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He scored high marks on trustworthiness, honesty, and empathy, and he outpaced Clinton in voter surveys in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Biden attracted momentum, and the media speculated about his candidacy. Yet he was still in mourning, and Obama favored Clinton. On October 21, 2015, Biden announced that he had decided not to run.

More sorrows invaded the Biden family when Hunter’s drug addiction, business activities, personal misbehavior, and tax evasion landed him in trouble with the law, provoking a scandal during his father’s presidency. After a plea deal collapsed in summer 2023, a federal court found Hunter guilty of illegal possession of a gun and lying about his drug use when he purchased it. In September 2024, he pleaded guilty to federal tax charges for failure to pay $1.4 million owed the IRS. The court set a sentencing date for December 16, 2024, when he faced up to 17 years in prison.

After repeatedly stating that he would not pardon Hunter, on December 1, 2024, President Biden issued him full and unconditional clemency for all federal offenses committed between 2014 and 2024. The president believed that Hunter had been the victim of politically motivated prosecutions and concluded, “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.” Perhaps some did, but Congress members from both parties criticized the executive pardon.

Biden’s father imparted an important lesson to his son from his life of hard knocks as the family’s breadwinner, which instilled resilience in both men. Through crushing tragedies and disappointments in his personal and political lives, he fondly repeated one of his father’s favorite maxims. “Champ, it’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how quickly you get up."