>Bidens
from https://web.archive.org/web/20170802070752/http://www.delawaretoday.com/Delaware-Today/September-2008/The-Biden-Archive-Family-Business/
BIDEN Family Business
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Last November Beau married Hallie Olivere — an Archmere Academy guidance counselor — at an intimate wedding on Nantucket Island, Mass., the place where he proposed to her a year earlier, and where his family has celebrated Thanksgiving for the past 26 years.
The person who probably knows him best is his younger brother Hunter, who calls Beau his hero and closest confidant. Hunter hints that Beau will join the political arena, and says, “I will run his campaign.”
While Hunter, 33, got the head start when it comes to raising children — he has been married to his wife Kathleen for 10 years and has three daughters — he wants Beau to be the one to run for political office first. He says he thinks about running himself, but “I think about it more for Beau, just because I have such great faith in him, not only as a brother but as a politician.”
Beau says, “I intend to be engaged and involved in the political process, and what form that takes, we’ll see.” He adopted from his father and grandfather Plato’s philosophy that the price good men pay for not being involved in politics is being governed by people who are not as good as they are. “You couldn’t be raised in my family and not want to be involved,” he says.
Biden family dinners, which often included Beau’s grandparents in addition to his dad and mom Jill, younger brother Hunter and sister Ashley, were an important part of daily life. “Our dinner table was a place where eating was almost incidental to the discussion, whether it be my mother’s teaching career or what was going on in our state or the nation or the world.”
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Hallie, 30, remembers the first time she watched then-boyfriend Beau speak in public in place of the senator.
They had plans to go out with friends when Beau called and told her he was sorry, but they had to go to a dinner so he could say a few words for his father.
They attended a benefit for Saint Francis Hospital and when it was time for the speech Sen. Joe Biden was scheduled to give, Beau got up and talked about the many injuries he and his younger brother Hunter had over the years and how good the hospital had always been to his family.
“It was startling how personable he was,” Hallie says. “The real him came across.” She looked around at the audience and saw how intently everyone was listening. “As a girlfriend, I was so proud and impressed.”
Hunter, who is a year and a day younger than Beau, says, “I don’t know anybody you’d talk to who knows Beau intimately and doesn’t consider Beau one of the most impressive people they’ve met, as a person and a friend.”
Hallie says Beau’s energy is contagious. He’ll drop whatever he’s doing to help out a friend or family member. He runs out the door just as he’s about to sit down to dinner if his grandmother calls and needs him. If one of Hunter’s three daughters forgets her lunch, Beau happily drops it off at school.
Rob Buccini, a longtime friend of Beau and the real estate developer with the Buccini/Pollin Group working to revitalize downtown Wilmington, says he and Beau have gone from riding motor bikes and trick-or-treating together to visiting one another at college. Now both back in Wilmington and working only a few blocks apart, they speak once or twice a day. “There’s a comfort level,” Buccini says. “After a long week, he’s the perfect person to go out with on a Friday night if I am tired or drained.”
While Hunter says it is not in his immediate future to run for office, he is eager to help big brother Beau in whatever course of action he takes. “I think he’s completely sincere in that he hasn’t made any decision yet about when and what office,” Hunter says.
One thing’s for sure — there’s more to come from the Biden family. Delaware will have to wait and see.