Biden honors the memory of his late first wife and baby daughter who died in a 1972 car crash

WILMINGTON, Del.– President Joe Biden honored his first wife and daughter on Wednesday, 52 years after they died in a car crash in Delaware. a defining moment for the lifelong civil servant.

Biden’s wife Neilia, 30, had taken their children — 1-year-old daughter Naomi and sons Beau and Hunter — to buy Christmas trees when the car she was driving was run over by a tractor-trailer. Neilia and Naomi were killed. Beau, 3 and Hunter2, were seriously injured.

The President, his current wife, Jillson Hunter and other members of the family attended a private memorial Mass early Wednesday at St. Joseph at Brandywine Roman Catholic Church near Biden’s home in Delaware. After the service, the family, with Jill Biden holding hands with Hunter’s young son, Beau Biden, walked to the cemetery behind the church where the graves are located.

Biden often speaks about personal losswho shared the story last week. He said he was in Washington with then-Senator. Edward KennedyD-Mass., when he got a phone call.

“I got a call from my local fire department saying there had been an accident,” he said at a White House dinner attended by members of Kennedy’s family. “And the poor firewoman they called for me said – I said, ‘How are they doing?’ They said, ‘Uh, uh, uh, she’s dead. And I’m not sure your two sons will make it.”

Biden, who was also 30 at the time of the accident, talks about how he almost left his career behind. But he followed the advice of other senators, was carried into office at his sons’ hospital bedside, and made a daily commute between Delaware and Washington on Amtrak.

Next month, Biden will close the book on a nearly 50-year career in elected politics and public service, including 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president and four years as president.

His openness about his grief and coping with it, and his ability to empathize with others who have experienced loss, have become one of his trademarks.

Biden married Jill Jacobs in 1977 and she helped raise Beau and Hunter as if they were her own. Later, she and Biden added daughter Ashley.

Decades after that fatal car crash, Biden, as vice president, once again navigated personal loss Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. Beau Biden is also buried in the cemetery.