On Saturday, May 30, 2015, Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, died of brain cancer at the age of 46. Beau Biden had been suffering from brain cancer for the last few years of his life, after he’d suffered a mild stroke in 2010. He had been dealing well with the illness until recently. About a week before his death, he was admitted to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he would be treated until he died.
Beau Biden has been involved with politics in his home state of Delaware for much of his life, serving up until recently as Delaware’s Attorney General. The younger Biden had been a lawyer for much of his life, and had served in Iraq as part of the Delaware National Guard. Beau had grander political aspirations just ahead of him. In 2014, Beau Biden had announced that he would run for governor of Delaware in 2016.
Beau Biden was a popular politician, beloved by both his family and the public, and it’s a tragedy that someone so young, with such a clear political future, would suffer such a death. He is survived by his wife of 13 years, Hallie, and his two young children, Natalie, 10, and Hunter, 9. In the words of the Biden family, “Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known” (beaubiden.com/splash). Obama gave the eulogy at the funeral Saturday, June 6 in Wilmington, Delaware.