Vice President Joe Biden has endured his fair share of tragedies, from personal issues he
suffered as a child to loved ones' lives cut short.
He knows all too well that life isn't always roses.
Here's Joe Biden's tragic real-life story.
Before Joe Biden ascended into the national political arena, he was a young boy living
in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with his parents and three siblings.
However, life wasn't always easy for the Bidens.
According to The New York Times,
"[Joe's] father suffered a number of business reversals, and for several years when Joe
Jr. was young, the Bidens were forced to move in with his mother’s parents...in their
modest home on North Washington Avenue in Scranton."
According to Biden, the hardships taught him a valuable lesson about life, as he told The
New York Times,
"My dad always said, 'Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down,
but how quickly he gets up.'"
The politician also doesn't drink alcohol due to his family history.
Biden explained to The New York Times,
"There are enough alcoholics in my family."
Not many people know that Vice President Joe Biden struggled with stuttering as a young
child.
The New York Times revealed,
"Joey was a popular kid, if a bit quick with a punch, especially if someone teased him
about his stutter, which he struggled mightily to conquer."
Biden reportedly recited poetry in his spare time in the hopes of perfecting his speech.
But despite the future politician's attempts, he was still bullied at school.
He wrote in a March 2011 essay for People,
"I never had professional therapy, but a couple of nuns taught me to put a cadence to my speaking,
and that's why I spent so much time reading poetry...But even in my small, boys' prep
school, I got nailed in Latin class with the nickname Joe Impedimenta.
You get so desperate, you're so embarrassed."
Biden eventually overcame his stuttering, going on to help others with the same issue.
"Your stutter does not define who you are."
At the beginning of Joe Biden's career in December 1972, he tragically lost his wife,
30-year-old Neilia Biden, and their year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car accident.
The couple's two young sons, 4-year-old Beau and 3-year-old Hunter, survived the crash
with serious injuries.
According to the New Yorker, Biden's wife and the kids were on their way to pick out
a Christmas tree when the heartbreaking incident happened.
"My wife was dead, my daughter was dead, and I wasn't sure how my sons were gonna make
it."
Although Joe had to put on a tough face for his surviving children, the loss was devastating.
In his 2007 memoir, Promises to Keep, Biden explained,
"Well, I didn't want to hear anything about a merciful God.
No words, no prayer, no sermon gave me ease.
I felt God had played a horrible trick on me, and I was angry."
Joe decided to put all of his energy into raising his sons, and revealed in a speech
at the 2015 commencement address at Yale University,
"Many people have gone through things like that.
But because I had the incredible good fortune of an extended family, grounded in love and
loyalty, imbued with a sense of obligation imparted to each of us, I not only got help,
but, by focusing on my sons, I found my redemption."
Joe married his second wife Jill, in 1977, and she can still regularly be found by his
side on the campaign trail.
Joe and Jill welcomed their daughter, Ashley Biden, in 1981.
Joe Biden faced another tragedy in May 2015 when his oldest son, Beau Biden, died of cancer
at the age of 46.
Joe and his second wife, Jill, weren't completely prepared for the loss, despite Beau receiving
the diagnosis in August 2013.
Jill said on the Megyn Kelly Today show,
"We never gave up hope.
We tried treatment after treatment, month after month.
But we always felt - until the moment he closed his eyes - we always felt he was going to
live."
"Throughout Beau's illness, I mean, even though the diagnosis was truly devastating, we always
had hope."
Joe revealed during an interview with Stephen Colbert that, in the months before Beau's
passing, his son sat him down and told him,
"I know how much you love me.
You got to promise me something.
Promise me you're going to be alright."
Although Joe's grief has been tough for him, he knows he's not alone, and he told Colbert,
"So many people...who have losses as severe or maybe worse than mine and don't have the
support I have...The loss is serious and it's consequential, but there are so many other
people going through this."
After losing Beau Biden in May 2015, Joe suffered even more personal losses.
The first political peer he lost was the late Arizona Senator John McCain, who died in August
2018 from the same brain cancer Beau had.
In his public eulogy to McCain, Joe said,
"The disease that took John's life took our mutual friend's, Teddy [Kennedy]'s life, the
exact same disease nine years ago...and three years ago, took my beautiful son Beau's life...And
it takes so much from those we love, and from the families who love them, that in order
to survive, we have to remember how they lived, not how they died."
"It's brutal.
It's relentless.
It's unforgiving."
Only months after losing McCain, Biden lost another dear friend, Michigan Democrat John
Dingell, in February 2019.
Joe tweeted,
"He was a friend and I will miss him terribly."
In addition to suffering devastating losses in his family, Vice President Joe Biden endured
major medical emergencies in the 1980s.
According to Delaware News Journal,
"[Joe Biden] was having regular headaches...He was also feeling pain in his neck."
Biden explained in his 2007 book, Promises to Keep, that the symptoms resulted in a scary
episode in February 1988.
After giving a speech at the University of Rochester,
"[There was] lightning flashing inside my head, a powerful electrical surge - and then
a rip of pain like I'd never felt before."
After returning home, Biden was rushed to hospital to address his concerning symptoms.
During a CT scan, the attending doctor found two aneurysms in Biden's brain, and needed
to operate.
As Biden was being wheeled to surgery, he asked the surgeon what his chances were, a
terrifying moment he recalled during a speech at the 2013 National Conference on Mental
Health.
The doctor apparently replied,
"Senator, for mortality or morbidity?"
Although both surgeries were a success, Biden had to overcome some difficult post-op symptoms,
such as an immobile forehead.
But the good news is that he ultimately made a full recovery from the terrifying health
scare.
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