Joe Biden and I go way back ...

Just kidding! He doesn't really know me, of course.

But I was 19 years old and working as a student Radiologic Technologist at the Delaware Hospital (another career, another lifetime ago), on December 18, 1972, when the word got around that newly-elected Senator Biden's family had been involved in a devastating car crash outside Wilmington.

You could have heard a pin drop. I recall the day had been slow otherwise; we waited for more news.

Biden's sons, Beau and Hunter, arrived for x-rays; I wasn't on the case, but lingered with my colleagues in the hallway. I don't remember hearing anything about the boys' condition (they survived and are fine!). But I do remember, as if it were yesterday, when the news arrived that Neilia Biden and the Bidens' toddler daughter, Amy, had been killed instantly in the crash.

Delaware mourned -- truly. I moved away in 1977, but the memory lingers. We all felt terrible for the Biden family.

Well, time passes, and I moved to Pennsylvania, then to New Jersey. Politics wasn't much on the radar as I raised my kids. But I am just delighted to see Joe Biden on the ticket with Barack Obama. Joe has worked so hard to get this far.

I may not have voted for him the very first time I was old enough to vote (memory fails me, and I come from a staunchly Republican family). But I will certainly vote for him this time around!

Comments

Jan said…
Thanks for sharing your memories of that day. I don't remember it at all, but I was living on the west coast and was pretty oblivious to the other coast.

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