NEILIA HUNTER BIDEN

Neilia Hunter Biden
American teacher ‧ Joe Biden’s wife

Neilia Hunter Biden was an American teacher and the first wife of Joe Biden, the 46th and current president of the United States. She died in a car crash in 1972 with her one-year-old daughter, Naomi. Her two sons, Beau and Hunter, were critically injured but survived the incident.Just weeks after being elected the junior senator from Delaware, Joe Biden’s first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, are killed in a car accident while out shopping for a Christmas tree on December 18, 1972, when a tractor-trailer strikes their vehicle.

The Bidens’ sons, Beau and Hunter, were also in the car and survived with serious injuries. At the time, Beau was 4 years old and suffered multiple broken bones, while Hunter, who was 3, had a fractured skull. Investigations revealed the tractor-trailer broadsided Neilia Biden’s Chevrolet station wagon at a rural intersection in Hockessin, Delaware. Neither driver was found to be at fault for the collision.

The future president, who had recently turned 30, learned of the tragedy while interviewing staff in Washington, D.C. After considering resigning, he ultimately chose to remain in office, and, on January 5, 1973, was sworn in as senator from his sons’ hospital room in Wilmington, Delaware. Throughout his lengthy Senate career, Biden commuted daily from Wilmington to the U.S. Capitol to kiss the boys good morning and goodnight.

“Many people have gone through things like that,” Biden said during a 2015 Yale University commencement speech. “But because I had the incredible good fortune of an extended family, grounded in love and loyalty, imbued with a sense of obligation imparted to each of us, I not only got help. But by focusing on my sons, I found my redemption.”

Neilia, who married Biden in 1966 and played a key role in his campaigns, was honored five years after her death with the dedication of the The Neilia Hunter Biden Park outside the city of Wilmington.

Biden later married Jill Biden in 1977, who became first lady when he assumed the presidency in 2021. The couple have a daughter, Ashley. Beau Biden, a rising political figure himself, died from a brain tumor at the age of 46 in 2015.
about her. They recall that she was reserved, naturally beautiful and modest. But time and again, despite the haziness that comes with the years passing, everyone says, more than anything, she was kind.

Neilia
In the summer before seventh grade, 12-year-old Susan Spooner couldn’t wait to go back to her school, Bellevue Heights. She had received her teacher assignment in the mail. “Oh, boy, you’re going to have Neilia Hunter?” her friend said. “She’s beautiful, Sue.”

On the first day of the school year, a hot summer morning, Spooner took her seat in the middle of the classroom and glanced up at Ms. Hunter. She was wearing brown-rimmed glasses and had her hair pulled back. “When she started speaking, she was exactly what my girlfriend had told me: very soft spoken and beautiful personality, and looking,” Spooner said.

Neilia was the teacher every student wanted to have, Spooner said. She fostered a comfortable space in her classroom, and she easily connected with her students. Like them, Neilia had grown up and attended school in central New York.Her extracurricular involvement continued at SU, where she joined the university’s chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority while studying at the College of Liberal Arts.

While recruiting for the sorority, Neilia would always rave about the potential new members she spoke with, speaking kindly about everyone she met, said Arlene Vanderlinde, one of Neilia’s sorority sisters. “When I think back, of all my sisters, in all those years, she was probably the sweetest, kindest, most lovely,” Vanderlinde said.

She also remembers Neilia’s shyness. While scanning her SU yearbook from 1962, she noticed Neilia wasn’t in the Kappa Alpha Theta group photo, though her name was listed. “She just didn’t try to call attention to herself,” Vanderline said. “She was very beautiful in a very understated way. She was not flamboyant in her dress and makeup or anything.”

After graduating from SU in 1964, Neilia taught English at Bellevue Heights until 1968. She treated every student the same, whether they were a cheerleader or a quiet kid, and she kept her door open if they needed her, said Patricia Smarzo, who was a student of Neilia’s for seventh grade. Smarzo described Neilia as a “big sister” who supported Smarzo during some of the worst moments of her adolescence.

When a few kids made up a song mocking the teenager for being overweight, Smarzo went to Neilia, crying. “Who said that to you?” Neilia asked. She was so angry, and “it was like waving a flag in front of a bull,” Smarzo said.

Neilia would position herself near Smarzo’s bullies in the hallway to ensure they couldn’t make fun of her. After the teacher spoke with them multiple times, the bullies’ rampant teasing eventually stopped. One apologized years later, Smarzo said, and she believes it’s because Neilia’s words resonated with them.

Whenever Smarzo felt insecure, especially in her teen years, she would remember how Neilia would call her beautiful and help her understand that, one day, she would be happy with who she was and how she looked. “Don’t worry. You’ll grow into yourself,” Neilia would say.

“Since I was a kid in school, there have always been bullies. There always will be. But there will always be teachers out there that will take you under their wing and say, ‘It will get better,’” Smarzo said.
In her 2019 memoir, Jill Biden wrote of the family’s annual visits to the cemetery where Neilia and Naomi are buried. “I owed her so much: my loyalty, my gratitude for the gift of these beautiful boys, and, yes, my love,” she wrote.