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

rooms. Hunter remembered how his father would hold him out a high window so he could reach the eaves with a paintbrush.

Just as Joe had hoped, his new house welcomed a stream of family and friends. In fact, so many people were always coming and going that a friend named this Biden house “the Station.”

Around Wilmington, Biden’s neighbors and acquaintances thought of him as friendly, generous, helpful Joe. They knew that he was a senator, of course, but they also felt that he was one of them. His mother had brought him up to believe that he was the equal of anyone, but also that anyone was equal to him.

One day Biden happened to be driving through a neighborhood when he saw a boy snatch a woman’s purse. As the boy started to run away, Joe jumped out of his car. He chased the boy through backyards and over fences, until the thief threw the purse down.

Joe returned the purse to the woman, who was overwhelmed by his gallantry. Thirty years later, she would still have that same purse. She expected Biden to become president someday, and she’d kept the rescued purse for him to sign when he was elected.

One Friday evening in March 1975, Joe happened to return from Washington to Wilmington by plane, instead of his usual train ride. As he walked through the airport, he noticed posters for the New Castle County parks. The posters showed different scenes around the park system, and the same beautiful, blond young woman appeared in several posters.

At home, Joe found his brothers waiting, with their dates, to go out with him. Frank suggested that Joe bring a date along too. He knew a young woman whom Joe was sure to like, he said, and he gave Joe her phone number.

Joe didn’t feel like going on a date with someone new—he just wanted to spend time with his family that night. But the next day, after a good rest, he was curious about this young woman. Her name was Jill Jacobs. Frank had said, “She doesn’t like politics,” and for some reason that appealed to Joe. He gave her a call.

As it happened, Jill already had a date for Saturday night. But this roused Joe’s competitive side, and he asked her to break her date. He was a US senator, he explained, and he only had this night in town. Joe’s charm must have come through the phone, because Jill agreed to try to rearrange her schedule.

When Joe picked her up that night, he was startled to recognize the person who answered the door. It was the same beautiful woman he’d seen on the New Castle County Parks posters.

They drove to Philadelphia for dinner. Joe realized, as they talked, that Frank was right—Jill wasn’t interested in politics. And she didn’t seem impressed to be going out with a US senator.

She’d voted for him in 1972, though. That was the first time she’d ever voted, and she remembered going to senator-elect Biden’s victory party at the Hotel Du Pont and shaking hands with him and his wife, Neilia. That fall, Jill had been a junior at the University of Delaware, Joe’s old school. She was nine years younger than Joe.

Over dinner, Joe and Jill had much to talk about. She didn’t ask him about his work in the Senate, or about famous people he’d met. They talked instead about their families, and people they both knew, and “about books and real life,” as Biden wrote later.

Joe was immediately taken with Jill Jacobs. This evening was the first time since Neilia’s death that he’d been so happy in a woman’s company. He asked her out the next night, and the one after that. Jill didn’t point out that obviously he’d been fibbing about having only one night in town, but Joe could tell that she was amused.

Jill found a lot to like about Joe, too, but she didn’t want to jump into a serious relationship. She’d married young, and she was in the process of divorcing her first husband. Now she was happy to be single and starting a teaching job in September. And finally, she really didn’t want to get involved with a politician.

If Jill had paid more attention to Delaware politics, she might have realized how persistent Joe Biden could be. She might have guessed that he had great faith in his own judgment, and that he wouldn’t let her go just because she had other plans for her life.

But for now, they compromised. Jill agreed that she wouldn’t date anyone except him, and Joe seemed to accept that this wasn’t a long-term commitment. After all, he did have two young children. And he wasn’t about to give up politics.

However, Jill and Joe kept on spending time with each other. Jill met Beau and Hunter, and sometimes the four of them went out together. Eventually, as she said later, “It felt like I dated three guys.”

Joe met Jill’s family and quickly felt at home with them. Even more so, Jill felt at home with Joe’s family. After a few months, she was eating dinner most nights at the Station with Valerie and Jack and the boys, whether Joe was in town or not.

For Thanksgiving 1975, Jill suggested that she and Joe and the boys should go away for the weekend. They decided on Nantucket, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, for their getaway. During the long drive north, Jill helped Beau and Hunter make out their Christmas lists.

By the next year Joe, and especially Jill, still weren’t sure they wanted to make a commitment. But Joe’s sons had decided. They came to see their dad early one morning in 1976, while he was shaving. Joe could tell they were nervous, but determined, about something serious. Beau, seven years old, said to his brother, “You tell him, Hunt.”

“No, you tell him,” said six-year-old Hunter. There was a pause. Then he blurted out, “Beau thinks we should get married.”

“We think we should