Beau Biden: What They’re Saying
Beau Biden speaks at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. The former Delaware attorney general died over the weekend. (AP Photo.)
Beau Biden, the former Delaware attorney general and son of Vice President Joe Biden, passed over the weekend after a battle with brain cancer. Flags are flying at half-staff in Delaware today. What they’re saying about Biden and his death:
Condolences poured in from both sides of the aisle after Vice President Joe Biden announced Saturday that his son Beau Biden had died at age 46 after a battle with brain cancer. President Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz were among those who offered their sympathies to the Biden family, while others shared their own memories of what Beau Biden had meant to them.
Beau Biden was described by ordinary Delawareans Sunday as a good man —sensitive and caring, principled and tough.
“It’s tragic not just because he was so young, but because of what he could have done for his state,” said Darryl Skrovanek, a teacher at Dickinson High School and one of several Beau Biden fans among the lunch crowd at J’s Cafe in Greenville. “He was a good man.”
Robert Wheatley, chairman of the Sussex Planning & Zoning Commission, was one of dozens of Sussex Democrats who gathered in an Ocean View park Sunday for a barbecue lunch where Biden’s death, and his life in politics, was much discussed. “The guy, really, he was a man who knew what he was,” Wheatley said of Biden. “He knew people knew him. But he also knew what people needed.”
One of his finest moments on the national stage came in August 2008 when he introduced his father at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Here’s that speech.
Brain cancer, a general term used by doctors to encompass a variety of malignant and benign tumors that grow in and around the brain, impacts thousands of people each year in the United States. This past year there were nearly 70,000 new cases and 14,000 deaths from this disease. While not as prevalent as stroke related deaths—which claimed more than 130,000 lives in the United States this past year—these numbers are significant.
