Naomi Biden about her father, Hunter

[Dennis Donovan]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1308823998415933440.html

Though the whole world knows his name, no one knows who he is.

Here's a thread on my dad, Hunter Biden - free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of power-at-all-costs politics. The truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human struggles:



My dad has never sought the spotlight. Growing up, when I attended political events with my pop people would ask if I was Beau’s daughter or “Beau’s brother's daughter.” He liked it that way. He found his purpose in doing everything in his power to help Beau achieve his dream.

He and Beau were one. One heart, one soul, one mind.

They grew up with the weight of knowing that each day they lived was a day that their sister, my namesake, and their mother lost. But they had each other and that would be enough. They would make sure it was enough.

After graduating college, not certain what he could do well but certain he wanted to do good, he joined the Jesuit Volunteer Core - A catholic organization working on behalf of marginalized groups and devoted to community and social justice. This is where he would meet my mom.

His dream was to attend Yale Law School, but he was rejected. He started his 1L year at Georgetown instead, he and my mom simultaneously preparing for the start of a family. I was born not just the day of, but in the middle of his civil procedure final exam.

He left the exam and rushed to meet my mother in the hospital. A good family friend still likes to joke about picking him up to take him to the hospital - dressed in a suit too big for him and still in the early days of a life of unknowable adventure.

Later that year, he applied to Yale as a transfer student. He thought he had no chance, but my mom believed in him and, more importantly, them together. For his personal statement, he wrote a poem. Something they encourage you strongly against doing.

He received a letter from Yale saying that the dedication and hard work he had devoted to his study of the law at Georgetown made him more than qualified, but that the poem, unlike anything else they had ever received, earned him a spot at Yale Law.

The 3 of us moved to New Haven into a house that, although no bigger than my freshman year dorm room, was all we needed to call home. Every night they put me to sleep to our anthem - 3 Is A Magic Number, from Schoolhouse Rock.

Supporting the three of us off nothing more than his student loans and the cash he saved working summers through high school and college (often w/ beau, including at a meat packing plant - long story lol), he* graduated from Yale Law.

*the three of us

After graduation, he put his dreams on hold to take a job that would ensure that anything was possible for me and my sisters. He used that money to pay off not only his own student loans, but my uncle Beau’s college and law school loans so that he could pursue his dreams too.

When my uncle got sick, my dad never missed a single doctors appointment or chemo treatment. When he got sicker, my dad lived out of a suitcase and slept in the chair next to his hospital bed for two months. He held his hand as he lost his brother and a big piece of himself too.

The pain he has endured would be enough to make a lesser man give up on life all together. But despite the best efforts of an cruel few to destroy a private man, he is sober, happy, and as at peace as ever today because as long his family needs him, he has not lost his purpose.

Originating tweet:

Link to tweet