Joe Biden by Beatrice Gormley (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

meeting. The professors and deans decided that Mr. Biden hadn’t cheated on purpose, but the incident went on his record. He received an F in the course, and he would have to take it over again in order to get his law degree.

Toward the end of the first year, with final exams looming, Joe realized that he was in serious trouble again. He had exactly ten days to cram a year’s worth of coursework into his head. Neilia came to the rescue, using her teaching skills to draw up study sheets for him. Joe, for the first time in his life, began drinking coffee to stay awake all night. In the end, he managed to avoid flunking out.

So he survived his first year of law school. That summer, he and Neilia were married. Joe was touched that her Protestant, Republican father had come to accept Neilia’s marrying a Catholic—and a Democrat, to boot. On August 27, 1966, Neilia and Joe were married in a Catholic church in Skaneateles. The Hunters hosted a big reception at the country club.

The wedding was a joyous celebration with all of Joe’s family, as well as friends from Scranton, Wilmington, Archmere Academy, the University of Delaware, and law school. Two of Joe’s buddies from the Scranton days, Larry Orr and Charlie Roth, were his ushers.

The newlyweds moved into a small apartment in Syracuse, in a neighborhood of modest houses. Neilia could walk to nearby Bellevue, the school where she taught eighth grade. The Bidens opened their home to their old friends, including Neilia’s former roommate, Bobbie, and her husband, Dan Greene. And they started making new friends with the neighbors.

Joe still had two years of law school to complete, but he took time from studying to organize the local young people for sports: stickball, football, or whatever they could play on the streets. Driving around the neighborhood in his light green sports car, a ’67 Corvette, Joe would round up kids for a game. He and Neilia, the beautiful, outgoing local teacher, were a glamorous couple in the neighborhood.

Both Neilia and Joe loved having kids around. They often invited girls and boys over for dinner. They let them play with their new dog, a German shepherd named Senator. One boy, Kevin Coyne, formed a special attachment with the Bidens. Kevin had a speech impediment, and certain older boys teased him about it. Once, when Joe happened to overhear those boys tormenting Kevin, he jumped over the fence and scolded them fiercely.

“He scared the daylights out of them,” Kevin remembered with satisfaction. Kevin became a helpful young friend to the Bidens, walking Senator for them and giving them tips on where to shop.

Neilia likewise befriended a young girl, Pat Cowin, in her eighth-grade class at Bellevue. Pat’s own mother was often ill and unable to take care of her, but Neilia gave Pat some of the special attention she longed for.

To supplement Neilia’s small teaching salary, Joe took several odd jobs during his summers. He worked at a marina on Skaneateles Lake, as a hotel night clerk, and for the Schaefer Beer company.

In the spring of 1968, Joe Biden received his law degree. He was only seventy-eighth in a class of eighty-five, but he’d made a deep impression on many of his teachers and fellow students. James Weeks, the technical writing professor who had given Biden an F the first time around, described his former student as “far from distinguished scholastically.” However, he added, “He knows what he is doing and appears to possess good judgment and a highly developed sense of responsibility.”

The Importance of Politics

Now that Joe had his law degree, would he and Neilia make their home in New York, or in Delaware? Joe’s family, of course, hoped the young couple would settle near them. Joseph Biden urged his son to apply to law firms in Wilmington.

Using his business connections, Joe’s father got him a meeting with a friend of a friend, a superior court judge. The judge was impressed with Joe—“a sparkler,” he called him later. On the spot, he arranged a job interview for Joe with the highly respected law firm of Prickett, Ward, Burt & Sanders.

At the lunch interview, Rod Ward kidded Joe about his so-so grades in law school. “Obviously, you’re hoping to get a job based on your good looks.” Joe assumed that meant he didn’t have a chance of being hired.

But actually, Ward was impressed with this young man’s intelligence and likability. Also, Joe had excellent letters of recommendation from his law school professors. “Mr. Biden has shown himself to possess the confidence and capabilities which would enable him to become an outstanding trial attorney,” Dean Robert Miller had written. So the law firm offered Joe Biden a job, although at a low starting salary.

In the summer of 1968, the young Bidens threw a big farewell barbecue for their friends and neighbors in Syracuse. Then they moved to Wilmington, where they rented a small farmhouse in Mayfield, where Joe’s parents still lived. Joe and Neilia started looking for a house to buy. Neilia was pregnant with their first child, and it seemed that they were well launched on their plan for their life together.

Joe took up his job at Prickett, Ward, Burt & Sanders, but he stayed with them for only six months. He worked hard for the law firm, but he felt more and more uncomfortable with their politics. He was a Democrat, sympathizing with labor unions and civil rights. The members of the firm, in contrast, were Republicans, and their main clients were wealthy corporations. Joe didn’t tell his bosses that he would never vote for Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate for president in 1968.

Joe finally decided to quit the day he watched William Prickett, one of the partners, argue a case at the courthouse in downtown Wilmington. Prickett was defending the Catalytic Construction Company against a welder who had been badly burned