PRESIDENT Joe Biden has drawn inspiration from his late father, Joe Biden Sr., over the course of a long career.
Despite Joe Biden Sr.’s difficult life, Biden Jr. said he never lost faith and continued to work toward a better life for his family.
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Who was Joe Biden’s father?
President Joe Biden’s father was a man of neverending faith and determination to build a good life for his family of six.
Biden’s father, Joe Biden Sr., was born in 1915 in Baltimore, Maryland, and although his 20s were filled with yacht sailing trips and flying planes, his later life as a family man was not as carefree.
Biden Jr. describes his childhood as a positive experience, but his father suffered from business reversals in his job, ultimately forcing the family to move in with Biden Jr.’s maternal grandparents.
“I remember when my Dad had to leave our home in Scranton, Pennsylvania to find work. I grew up in a family where if the price of food went up, you felt it,” Biden Jr. said in his State of the Union speech on March 1, 2022.
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Biden Sr. had difficulty finding work in a post-World War II era and commuted to Wilmington, Delaware where he worked cleaning boilers for a heating and cooling company.
He previously worked for a car dealership and although the pay was good, his dignity was worth more than his paycheck.
In Biden Jr.’s autobiography, he describes a story of a Christmas party at his father’s work. The manager would reward the employees with silver dollars if they did well, but at the party, he spilled a bucket of the silver dollars to watch his employees rush to scoop them up off the floor.
It was a free-for-all and Biden Sr. grabbed his wife, Jean, and left. He never returned to work for the dealership.
“That’s how you come to believe, to the very core of your being, that work is more than a paycheck,” Biden Jr. said in a 2008 speech while accepting the Democratic vice-presidential nomination.
“It’s dignity. It’s respect.”
Joe Biden Sr. passed away in September 2002 from brain cancer when he was 86 years old.
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What has Joe Biden said about his father?
Biden Sr.’s don’t give up attitude is what has motivated Biden Jr. over the years and in his 2008 speech, Biden Jr. said, “My dad always said, ‘Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.’”
When Biden Jr. became a 2020 presidential nominee, he acknowledged his father and said, “there’s no higher calling for a woman or a man than to be a good mother or a good father.”
How did Joe Biden Sr. boost his son’s morale?
When Joe Biden Jr. lost his wife, Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, in 1972 he was inconsolable.
He had won the Senate seat and was preparing to be sworn in when the unimaginable happened with the death of his wife and youngest child.
He decided to persevere and continue on his career path and to boost his son’s spirits, Biden Sr. wanted to bring added dignity to his son’s new position.
Biden Jr.’s sister Valerie Biden Owens told The New York Times, “After 1972, he gave up car sales and went into real estate.
“He didn’t want a United States senator to have a used-car salesman for a dad.”
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