Born two-and-a-half years into Joe’s marriage to college sweetheart Neilia Hunter Biden, Joseph Robinette ‘Beau” Biden III certainly seemed the most likely to enter the family business.
“I always knew that Beau would follow in his dad’s footsteps,” Dr. Jill Biden (who, for the record, gave that Rolex to her husband for Christmas one year) told Vanity Fair of the son she met shortly after her and Joe’s first date in 1975. “He loved politics; he loved the campaigns, the picnics and coffees and parades.”
At Joe’s alma mater, Delaware’s Archmere Academy, Beau’s tendency to be a rule-follower earned him his nickname of “The Sheriff,” younger brother Hunter Biden shared with The New Yorker in 2019. ”If we wanted to jump off a cliff into a watering hole, I would say, ‘I’m ready, let’s go,’ and Beau would say, ‘Wait, wait, wait, before we do it, make sure there aren’t any rocks down there.'”
His first campaign saw him elected student body president with Hunter, just 12 months his junior, helping to pass out campaign flyers. Building an impressive resume, Beau followed up college at the University of Pennsylvania with law school at Syracuse (graduating in 1994, 26 years after Dad) before working as a federal prosecutor and in private practice in Philadelphia.