Happiness and sadness have forged the man Joe Biden is

No man is an island,/ Entire of itself./ Each is a piece of the continent,/ A part of the main./ If a clod be washed away by the sea,/ Europe is the less./ As well as if a promontory were./ As well as if a manor of thy friend's/ Or of thine own were./ Any man's death diminishes me,/ Because I am involved in mankind,/ And therefore, never send to know/ For whom the bell tolls,/ It tolls for thee. – John Donne

The Cape Gazette publishes historic photographs in its Tuesday edition.

In recent years, many of those photographs have originated as postcards from the George and Irene Caley Postcard Collection housed in the Delaware Public Archives.

In that collection of thousands of postcards there is one, reproduced with this column, that includes an image of Joe Biden, who this week has become the official Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

Looking at the postcard brought forth many feelings. It reminded me of the many and varied chapters of people’s lives. Times of happiness and times of sadness. It also reminded me of how personal politics can be, especially in a small state like Delaware where we constantly cross paths with our elected officials – live and in person – not just on television screens.

This postcard shows a happy time in the Biden story. The year was 1972, and Joe Biden was running as a 29-year-old to become a United States senator. Showing his happy young family, the card was part of his Senate campaign. On the back were a stewed chicken recipe and a handwritten note from his wife Neilia. In addition to Joe and Neilia, the postcard also shows the couple’s three children: Beau, Hunter and their infant daughter Naomi.

Their happiness soared when Joe won that historic election over incumbent Sen. Caleb Boggs, but shattered a few months later when Neilia and Naomi died in a horrific car crash. Such tragedies spread great sadness, and it was no different for the Biden family. Joe went into a period of deep mourning.

People who have read this column through the years know I mention an Indian avatar – God in human form – named Meher Baba. On a visit to the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach several years ago, I was speaking to one of the staff members. He was adjusting the closers on screen doors to keep them quiet, sweeping pine needles from the packed sand pathways between the simple cabins where guests stay. He saw our Delaware license tag.

“Joe Biden territory,” he said. I nodded.

“You know he came down here one time. It was a year or two after his wife and daughter died in that terrible car crash. He was looking for answers for something so senseless; still in mourning.”

I hope Baba’s message of love and unity helped.

In the years since, Joe found new happiness with his second wife, Jill, and their daughter Ashley. I’ve often seen him showing the happiness of the politics he loves so much in his calling for public service. One year he rolled up his sleeves and climbed up on a picnic table as the final speaker of the day during an annual summer Democratic jamboree at Cape Henlopen State Park. Before he stepped up, he hugged a beaming Myrtle Shockley who, as I recall, was chairman of the Sussex County Democratic Party at the time.

The party faithful crowded around as he spoke, listening attentively, smiling as his pace quickened and his volume rose, applauding enthusiastically when he finished with a stern warning about the threat to our nation posed by China’s ascendancy and its nuclear weapons program.

I saw great happiness several years later when Joe and Jill rode in a white, horse-drawn carriage during the Return Day Parade in Georgetown two days after he was elected vice president. A happy time for Delaware, Sussex County and Georgetown.

Joe’s years as vice president were heady times in the swirling center of international politics. But deep sadness again tested, and further steeled, his character as he watched his son Beau struggle with and eventually succumb to brain cancer in May 2015.

Now Joe, forged by all of life’s ups and downs into the person he is today, finds himself on the greatest stage of all.

Joe Biden’s happiness and sadness have been, and continue to be, a visceral chapter in the lives of so many in this politically personal state of Delaware.