CNN will air a two-hour documentary, hosted by CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger, about the life of Joe Biden on September 7 at 8 p.m. ET.
It’s that second part – personal life – that really provides the framework for how Joe Biden became Joe Biden. Here are four important facts about Biden to better understand who he is.
Biden has kept personal losses so devastating that he says he thought about suicide
If you listen closely to Biden’s blunt speeches, you’ll hear him talk about the “black hole.” He describes it as a space in his chest, and tries to suck it in a dark place.
In 1972, weeks after the coronation of the most popular sitting Republican sen. Cale Boggs, Biden was on the verge of living his dream. He was just 30 words – barely old enough to be inducted as a U.S. Senator – when his wife Neilia, and baby daughter Naomi were killed in a car wreck while searching for a Christmas tree . His two young sons, Beau and Hunter, were badly injured.
Biden says that despair and anger consumed him. He tells CNN’s Gloria Borger in a new CNN documentary that he began to understand how devastating loss can lead to suicide.
“I thought about it,” Biden said. “I thought what it would be like to just walk the Delaware Bridge and just jump off and end it all. But I never got in a car and did it, or was never even close … What really saved me was my boys. “
More than four decades later, in 2015, one of those boys, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer. Before he passed, Beau asked his father to make him a promise, he knew how hard it would be for him once he was gone.
“He said, ‘Dad, I’ll be OK, no matter what happens,'” Biden said. “Father, you must promise me that you will be fine.”
Biden says that he is indeed OK, but that it is still emotional. He says his commitment to Beau has helped give him a purpose in life.
Biden says his wife Jill “gave me my life.” But at first she was not so sure about marrying him
Joe Biden and Jill Biden met in 1975, by a bit of luck: Biden was back from Washington one night, and he saw an airport for advertisements about the county parks. There was a blonde model on the ad.
Biden’s brother, Frankie Biden, picked him up from the airport, and Biden mentioned that this was the kind of woman he had wanted so far. Frankie knew the woman – Jill Jacobs – and gave her number to his brother.
It did not take long before the two were dating, bringing young Beau and Hunter together as well. The boys fell in love with their father, and they made it clear.
“I shaved one morning, and the boys came in,” Biden said. “Dad, we think we should be married to Jill.”
But Jill Biden did not immediately warm up to the idea.
“I had to ask her five times to marry me,” he said. “She would say no every time I asked her.”
Jill Biden explained her hesitation to Borger.
“I knew what the boys were going through. They lost their mother, and they lost their sister, and I knew this marriage had to work,” she said. “I had to be 100 percent sure that this marriage would last until death do us part, because […] I loved the boys so much that I thought, ‘I can not break her heart, and she can not lose another mother through a divorce.’ And so I had to be absolutely sure. “
Joe and Jill Biden were married in 1977 in a small ceremony at the UN Chapel.
Praying has an almost pastoral instinct to comfort others
Biden’s own personal losses have given him a unique opportunity to connect with those who have also lost loved ones.
Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel got emotional when he told CNN about a call from Biden when his father died late last year. Biden was in the middle of a heated primary season.
“Joe was the first to call. I mean, like the day he died,” Emanuel said. “He has a lot of things going on. First one to call and talk to. We told stories about our parents. He runs for office. You know, you can leave a voicemail.”
Emanuel says Biden comforted him.
“He’s a good man,” Emanuel said.
Biden has given countless eulogies in his years of public service to friends, colleagues, and even political opponents, such as Conservative Senator Strom Thurmond, once an established segregationist. Democratic rep. James Clyburn says he asked Thurmond Biden to do that.
“I think if you can stick to your own political beliefs and have the respect of people whose political beliefs are completely different, that says something,” Clyburn said.
Biden practiced Catholicism, and his faith helped him through the hardest seasons of his life
In his autobiography “Promises to Keep”, Biden credits his continued faith in the nuns who raised him in school. “Wherever nuns were, there was home,” he wrote. His wife Jill credits his faith to his mother.
“I think Joe’s faith is so strong,” Jill Biden told CNN. “It’s what I think he got from his mother, who was a very devout Catholic. Joe is really devout, and he never misses a service on Sunday.”
Sen. Chris Coons, a longtime Biden friend, says he would have mocked Biden slipping in the back of the church to the masses during Beau’s illness. Coons says Biden would leave before Mass ended so he would not disrupt the service.
Coons tells CNN he got glimpses of Biden’s rat chorus when Beau was sick.
“I would see him in meetings with his rosary circles. I knew he was praying for him,” Coons said, tearing back.
As Beau passed by, Biden began to wear Beau’s rosary.
“Have it in my pocket,” Biden told Borger, pulling it out to see her. “I love it all the time … You can see it’s dry.”
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