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Beau Biden, Vice President Joe Biden’s Son, Dies at 46

Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in 2012.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the elder son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., died on Saturday in Bethesda, Md. He was 46.

The cause was brain cancer, his father said.

Mr. Biden had spent more than a week receiving treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he died.

In a statement Saturday night, the vice president said, “It is with broken hearts that Hallie, Hunter, Ashley, Jill and I announce the passing of our husband, brother and son, Beau, after he battled brain cancer with the same integrity, courage and strength he demonstrated every day of his life.”

The statement went on to say, “In the words of the Biden family: Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.”

In 2010, the younger Mr. Biden, known as Beau, had suffered what officials described as a mild stroke. Three years later, he was admitted to the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after what White House officials described at the time as “an episode of disorientation and weakness.”

Officials said in 2013 that the doctors in Texas had removed a small lesion from his brain.

Mr. Biden’s death is a second tragic loss for the vice president, whose first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in 1972 when the station wagon they were driving in to go Christmas shopping was hit by a tractor-trailer. Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter, were also injured in the crash, but both survived.

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Beau Biden Introduces His Father in 2012

Joseph R. Biden III, who was known as Beau, introduced his father, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., during the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

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Joseph R. Biden III, who was known as Beau, introduced his father, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., during the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

A popular Democratic politician in his home state, who was known to be very close to his father, Mr. Biden served two terms as Delaware’s top law enforcement official before announcing last year that he would not run for a third term so he could make a bid for governor in 2016.

“What started as a thought — a very persistent thought — has now become a course of action that I wish to pursue,” Mr. Biden wrote in an open letter to his constituents in April 2014.

As recently as late February, some Delaware politicians close to Mr. Biden told news organizations that they still believed Mr. Biden planned to run for governor. But Mr. Biden’s health had apparently declined in recent weeks, and he was taken to Walter Reed this month.

Born on Feb. 3, 1969, in Wilmington, Del., Joseph Robinette Biden III was an energetic politician whose broad smile mirrored that of his father. He appeared to be a natural to follow his father’s path toward national political success.

A lawyer by training, Mr. Biden joined the Delaware National Guard in 2003, serving as a major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. His unit was deployed to Iraq in 2008, while his father was running for vice president. He was also a Bronze Star recipient.

In a short, emotional speech introducing his father at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Mr. Biden recalled the tragedy that had touched his family, describing the moments after the crash.

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Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., right, spoke with his son, Army Capt. Beau Biden, at a base near Baghdad in 2009.Credit...Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press

“One of my earliest memories was being in that hospital, Dad always at our side. We, not the Senate, were all he cared about,” Mr. Biden said. “He decided not to take the oath of office. He said, ‘Delaware can get another senator, but my boys can’t get another father.’ However, great men like Ted Kennedy, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey — men who had been tested themselves — convinced him to serve. So he was sworn in, in the hospital, at my bedside.”

Many in Delaware expected Mr. Biden to run for his father’s Senate seat after the 2008 election, but the younger Biden, who was elected attorney general in 2006, declined, saying he was still needed in his state as he pressed ahead on a major child molestation case his agency was pursuing against a pediatrician.

“I have a duty to fulfill as attorney general, and the immediate need to focus on a case of great consequence. And that is what I must do.”

He ran for re-election in 2010, serving a second term before deciding to seek higher office.

Mr. Biden, who lived in Greenville, Del., is survived by his wife, Hallie, and their children, Natalie, 11, and Hunter, 9; his parents, the vice president and Dr. Jill Biden; his brother, Hunter; and his sister, Ashley Biden.

President Obama and Michelle Obama visited the Bidens on Sunday, spending about a half-hour at the vice president’s residence at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington.

Earlier, the president said in a statement that he was grieving for the vice president and his family. “For all that Beau Biden achieved in his life, nothing made him prouder, nothing made him happier, nothing claimed a fuller focus of his love and devotion than his family,” Mr. Obama said. “Just like his dad.”

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The vice president and his son at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

In an outpouring of sympathy, many people on Twitter posted links to the vice president’s graduation speech at Yale University in May. Mr. Biden spoke at length about the tragedies he had endured and the ways they had made him stronger.

“Six weeks after my election, my whole world was altered forever,” he said, referring to his election to the Senate in 1972 and the crash that killed his wife and infant daughter. He said he had found redemption by focusing on his sons.

“I can remember my mother, a sweet lady, looking at me after we left the hospital and saying, ‘Joey, out of everything terrible that happens to you, something good will come if you look hard enough for it,’ ” Mr. Biden told the Yale graduates. “She was right.”

Mr. Biden reflected on his decision to travel home to Delaware each night even as he served in the Senate. Some said it suggested a lack of ambition, he noted, an indication that he was not serious about success as a national politician.

“But looking back on it,” Mr. Biden said, “the truth be told, the real reason I went home every night was that I needed my children more than they needed me.”

In a statement Sunday morning, Secretary of State John Kerry quoted the vice president as once saying that after losing a loved one, “there is a black hole you feel in your chest, like you’re being sucked back into it.” But Mr. Kerry added that “Joe has also said there comes a day ‘when the thought of your son or daughter, or your husband or wife, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes.’ ”

“As usual,” Mr. Kerry wrote, “Joe said it better than anyone else could.”

A correction was made on 
June 2, 2015

Because of an editing error, an obituary on Monday and in some editions on Sunday about Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the elder son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., misidentified the location of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he died. It is in Bethesda, Md., near Washington — not in Washington.

How we handle corrections

Kenneth R. Rosen contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section D, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Joseph R. Biden III, 46, Politician in Father’s Mold. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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