![]() ![]() Rachel Jackson, wife of President Andrew Jackson. Jaqueline Kennedy and Mary Lincoln both endured the loss of a child and a husband while in the White House.Ī quip about the Kennedy family, which carefully controlled its public image, is the oft-repeated admonition handed through generations that “ Kennedys don’t cry.” Kennedy’s son Patrick was less than 2 days old when he died in Massachusetts in August 1963. “Somebody like Bill Clinton was not afraid to say, ‘I feel your pain,’ but notice he wasn’t saying, ‘I’m in pain,’” she said.īiden may have changed the job in this way, embracing what might have been seen as a weakness in any previous presidency – particularly that of Donald Trump, who went to great lengths to find physicians to describe him as superhuman and created an epic photo-op to make it appear the Covid-19 that nearly killed him had no effect. She agreed that sharing individual grief with Americans has not previously been a presidential attribute. I called her to ask what we know about how presidents express grief, and she told me about Lincoln commuting on horseback from the cottage where the rest of the family went in part to escape being in the house where his son had died. She wrote back in February about some of the many tragedies that have befallen presidents. sharing their painīarbara Perry is co-chair of the presidential oral history program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. But hearing his discussion with Cooper, conducted in the White House, feels unique for an American president – all of whom have been men and all of whom, to varying degrees, have tried to exude invulnerable power, working to hide their maladies rather than relate to people through them.įeeling Americans’ pain vs. ![]() Hearing Biden talk about vulnerability – his own vulnerability – is not new in terms of his political life. Biden talked with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about working through those losses in a new episode of the “All There Is” podcast. His son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. His first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, died in a car crash in 1972, shortly after he was elected to Congress as a senator from Delaware. Bush.īiden’s own personal list of tragedies is well known and predates his presidency. Bush lost a daughter, the sister of George W. John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams both saw children die. So many presidents lost children and siblings, often before they were elected. His wife was inconsolable, and Pierce ended up being a notoriously bad president. MPI/Archive Photos/Getty Imagesįranklin Pierce’s only living son was cut down in a train accident between his election and inauguration. He is also buried at the cemetery.Calvin Coolidge with his wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, and their sons, Calvin Jr. After the service, the family walked out toward the graves carrying two large wreaths.īeau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at 46. ![]() Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church. Both women joined him on Sunday, as did Hunter and many of the president's grandchildren among others at St. Biden's raw openness around grief and his ability to empathize with fellow Americans who have experienced loss have become defining traits of his political career.īiden married Jill Jacobs in 1977 and they had a daughter, Ashley. But on the advice of other senators he stayed in office, commuting back and forth from Washington to Delaware. The tragedy almost prompted Biden, also age 30 when the accident happened, to give up his fledgling political career. The couple's two sons, Beau and Hunter, who were just about to turn 4 and 3 at the time, were also in the car and were seriously injured. 18 of that year as they went out to buy a Christmas tree. President Joe Biden and his family held a private memorial service Sunday to mark the 50th anniversary of the car crash that killed his first wife and their baby daughter.īiden, who had just been elected to the Senate in November 1972, was not in the car when his wife, 30-year-old Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were broadsided by a tractor-trailer on Dec. ![]()
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