Who is Jill Biden?

Jill Biden, wife of former Democratic vice president of presidential candidate Joe Biden, removes her mask to speak at the Cleveland Lakefront Amtrak train station. (AP Photo: Andrew Harnik)

Before being catapulted into the national spotlight when her husband became Vice President of the United States in 2008, Dr. Jill Biden was known to have kept a relatively low profile in her home state of Delaware.

It was only after she entered the upper echelons of the White House that the world was forced to sit down and take notice of the 69-year-old community college professor who has been a partner of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and senior political adviser. trust. for almost five decades.

On the second night of this year’s virtual Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August, former Vice President Biden joined his wife as she stood in the middle of an empty classroom at a public school in Wilmington, Delaware, where he had once taught to dozens of students. English for almost 30 years.

“To all of you across the country, think of your favorite educator who gave you the confidence to believe in yourself. That’s the kind of first lady … Jill Biden will be, ”she told the tens of thousands of American voters who had tuned in to watch the event, broadcast live on screens across the country.

With weeks before the presidential election and nearly every major poll predicting a victory for Biden, her statement will soon be put to the test, as Jill could be watching another season on Capitol Hill, except this time as the First Lady of the Nations. United. State.

The early life of Jill Biden

Born in New Jersey, Jill spent most of her childhood in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, with her four younger sisters and their parents. Her father Donald worked as a bank teller, while her mother Bonny was a homemaker.

After graduating from high school, she briefly earned a bachelor’s degree in fashion marketing, but ultimately decided to major in English at the University of Delaware. She attended college with her first husband Bill Stevenson, whom she later divorced in 1975.

Jill Biden campaigns for her husband Joe Biden in front of a small crowd outside the Rudolph Jones Student Center at Fayetteville State University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, during a Get Out the Vote rally on Tuesday, October 6, 2020 (Travis Long / The News & Observer). via AP)

The Bidens

Jill headlined the second night of the four-day DNC, where in addition to extolling her husband’s many virtues and urging all American voters to elect him as their new president, she also shared her own personal story of love and loss in intimate speech. gave birth from a classroom at Brandywine High School in Delaware.

“How can you build a broken family?” she asked, looking directly at the camera. “In the same way that you make a whole nation: with love and understanding and with small acts of kindness.”

In 1972, Joe lost his first wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter Naomi in a devastating car accident. Joe was about to give up his political career as a senator from Delaware to care for his sons Beau and Hunter, who escaped the accident with serious injuries; but some of his colleagues convinced him otherwise.

Three years later, he met Jill on a blind date. “She (Jill) brought me back to life,” Joe wrote in his memoir ‘Promises to Keep’ in 2007. “It made me start thinking that my family could be whole again.” The couple married in 1977 and welcomed their first child together in 1980.

But in 2015, tragedy struck again when Joe’s oldest son Beau succumbed to brain cancer, leaving behind his wife, Hallie Biden, and their two young children. “My life changed in an instant. During her illness, I really believed that she was going to live, until the moment she closed her eyes, and I never lost hope, “Jill said in an interview with USA Today last year.

But despite all the ups and downs, Jill has resolutely stood by her husband’s side through three presidential elections (1988, 2008 and 2020), both terms as Vice President of the United States, as well as a fair amount of crippling political scandals.

Joe and Jill Biden arrive at Miami International Airport in Miami on Monday, October 5, 2020 to travel to the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. (AP Photo: Andrew Harnik)

Jill’s career as an educator

Jill’s career as an educator took center stage when she became the only second lady in history to hold a full-time job outside the White House while her husband served as vice president under the Obama administration.

Teaching is not what I do. It is who I am.

Tonight I will give my convention speech from my previous classroom.

Brandywine High School. Room 232. pic.twitter.com/NXx1EkqVGq

– Dr. Jill Biden (@DrBiden) August 18, 2020

She began her career as an English teacher in local public schools and in a mental hospital right after graduating from the University of Delaware. Later, she earned two master’s degrees, one in reading and one in English, while working and raising a family with Joe. She taught composition in English at Delaware Technical and Community College for 15 years.

As a second lady, she worked as a full-time teacher at Northern Virginia Community College. When Joe was named Obama’s running mate in 2008, she was known to join her husband on the election campaign only on weekends when he wasn’t teaching. Between stops, she graded jobs aboard her field bus as it passed through different states in the US.

“Jill is always grading papers,” former first lady Michelle Obama said during her joint exit interview with People magazine. “Which is funny because I kept forgetting, ‘Oh yeah, you have a day job!’ And then she pulls out her papers and she’s so diligent and I’m like, ‘Look at you! You have a job! Tell me! Tell me how it is! “

According to a Washington Post report, Jill took a break from teaching for the first time since 1981 to stand by Joe’s side in his presidential campaign this year. But in a recent interview with CBS News, Jill said she has every intention of returning to the classroom if Joe is elected.

“If we get to the White House, I will continue teaching,” he said. “It is important and I want people to value teachers and know their contributions, and elevate the profession.”

“She (Jill) brought me back to life,” Joe wrote in his memoir ‘Promises to Keep’ in 2007. (Olivier Douliery / Pool via AP)

Her role as Second Lady

Given his vast experience in the field of education, it is no wonder that he was put in charge of an initiative to raise awareness of the value of community colleges in 2009. Later, in 2012, during a ‘Community College for the career ‘on the bus tour, helped promote links between community colleges and local businesses.

During her tenure as second lady, Jill along with first lady Michelle Obama also became recognized as champions of military families. They founded the Joining Forces Initiative in 2011 and made several visits to the Center for the Intrepid, which is a rehabilitation center for amputees and burn victims in Texas.

Experts say education and benefits for military families are likely the two causes he openly supports the most, even if he returns to the White House as First Lady after the next election.

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Controversies

Over the years, Jill has faced anger for constantly defending her husband against some particularly damning accusations. A controversy that resurfaced this year concerned Joe’s mishandling of the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, in which law professor Anita Hill accused the then Supreme Court nominee of harassment. persistent sexual intercourse.

Joe was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time and was widely criticized for allowing Thomas to testify before Hill. Nor did he take the testimony of three women who offered their own stories about Thomas.

When asked about the controversy in a recent interview with NPR, Jill said it was time to “move on.”

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Jill is also known to dodge questions about accusations from various women who claim that Joe Biden touched them inappropriately and made them feel uncomfortable. Jill responded to the accusation by saying that her husband had learned that he “needs to give people their space.”

In his recent book “Where the Light Entra,” he wrote that the former vice president came from a “hugging family,” but added that the women were “brave” to come forward with their accusations.

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