Beau Biden, son of Joe Biden, has died

Vice President Joe Biden is known for his speeches. But there is one particular speech Biden gave that I’ve never forgotten. I remember seeing it on TV, half-listening, and then, all at once, realizing Biden was saying something I had never heard him say before, something I had never heard any politician say before.

On May 25, 2012, Biden spoke to families of fallen soldiers and described the appeal of suicide.

As Vice President Joe Biden’s son was dying of brain cancer this spring, he delivered a speech at Yale that addressed his own losses and talked about how important his bond with his children was to him.

Biden’s first wife and daughter were killed in a car accident right after his first election to the Senate, when he was 30. In the speech, he downplayed his reputation for resiliency.

Beau Biden, the 46-year-old son of Vice President Joe Biden and former attorney general of Delaware, has died of brain cancer. In a statement released Saturday night, his father called him “quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.”

In 2008, Beau gave his father a touching introduction at the Democratic National Convention. He talked about Joe’s ambivalence about returning to Washington as Delaware’s 30-year-old senator after his wife and daughter died in a tragic car accident. Joe did eventually decide to serve, and was sworn into office at the hospital bedside of Beau, who had been critically injured in the same crash.

Beau Biden, the 46-year-old son of Vice President Joe Biden, and a former attorney general of Delaware, has died of brain cancer. In a statement released Saturday night, his father called him “quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.”

Here’s Vice President Joe Biden’s full statement: