FLOTUS: Jill Biden Part I

 

Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden (née Jacobs; born June 3, 1951) is an American educator who has been the first lady of the United States since 2021 as the wife of President Joe Biden. She was the second lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017 when her husband was vice president. Since 2009, Biden has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, and is believed to be the first wife of a vice president or president to hold a salaried position during the majority of her husband's tenure.

She has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Delaware, master's degrees in education and English from West Chester University and Villanova University, and returned to the University of Delaware for a doctoral degree in education. She taught English and reading in high schools for thirteen years and instructed adolescents with emotional disabilities at a psychiatric hospital. Then, for fifteen years, she was an English and writing instructor at Delaware Technical & Community College.

Born in Hammonton, New Jersey, she grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. She married Joe Biden in 1977, becoming the stepmother of Beau and Hunter, two sons from Joe Biden's first marriage. Biden and her husband also have a daughter together, Ashley Biden, born in 1981. She is the founder of the Biden Breast Health Initiative non-profit organization, co-founder of the Book Buddies program, co-founder of the Biden Foundation, is active in Delaware Boots on the Ground, and with Michelle Obama is co-founder of Joining Forces. She has published a memoir and two children's books.

Early life

Jill Tracy Jacobs was born on June 3, 1951, in Hammonton, New Jersey. She is the oldest of five sisters. Her father, Donald Carl Jacobs, was a bank teller and U.S. Navy signalman during World War II who used the G.I. Bill to attend business school and then worked his way up in the banking field. His family name had been Giacoppo (or some variation thereof); before his father, and others in the family, had emigrated from the Sicilian village of Gesso [it] in Italy. The name had then been changed to Jacobs, about a month after the family had entered the United States. Her mother, Bonny Jean (Godfrey) Jacobs, was a homemaker of English and Scottish descent.

As a child, she and her family lived in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, and relocated when she was eight to Mahwah, New Jersey. Her father was the CEO of the Mahwah Savings and Loan Association. In 1961, the Jacobs family moved to Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, a northern suburb of Philadelphia, and Donald became the president and CEO of InterCounty Savings and Loan in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia. He held that position for twenty years.

Her parents labeled themselves as "agnostic realists" and did not attend church, but she often attended Sunday services at a Presbyterian church with her grandmother. Later, Jacobs independently took membership classes at nearby Abington Presbyterian Church and, at age 16, was confirmed.

Jill Jacobs always intended to have a career. She began working at age 15, which included waitressing in Ocean City, New Jersey. She attended Upper Moreland High School, where, by her own later description, she was somewhat rebellious and enjoyed her social life, along with being a prankster. However, she has recalled that she always had loved being in English class, and her classmates have said she was a good student. She graduated in 1969.

Education and career, marriages and family

Jacobs enrolled in Brandywine Junior College in Pennsylvania for one semester. She intended to study fashion merchandising but found it unsatisfying. She married Bill Stevenson, a former college football player, in February 1970 taking the name Jill Stevenson. Within a couple of years he opened the Stone Balloon in Newark, Delaware, near the University of Delaware. It became one of the most successful college bars in the nation.

She switched her enrollment to the University of Delaware becoming a student in its College of Arts and Sciences, declaring English as her major. She took a year off from college and did a little modeling for a local agency in Wilmington to supplement her income. She and Stevenson drifted apart and they separated in 1974.

Joe and Jill in the 1970s

She met Senator Joe Biden in March 1975. They met on a blind date set up by his brother Frank, who had known her in college, though Biden had seen her photograph in a local advertisement. Although he was nearly nine years her senior, she was impressed by his more formal appearance and manners compared to the college men she had known, and after their first date, she told her mother, "Mom, I finally met a gentleman." Meanwhile, she was going through turbulent divorce proceedings with Stevenson; the court case ended with her not getting the half-share in the Stone Balloon she had wanted. A civil divorce was granted in May 1975.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Delaware in 1975. She began her career as a substitute teacher for the Wilmington public school system, and then taught high school English full-time for a year at St. Mark's High School in Wilmington. Around this time she spent five months working in Biden's Senate office; this included weekly trips with the senator's mobile outreach operation to the southern portions of the state.

She and Joe Biden were married on June 17, 1977, at the Chapel at the United Nations in New York City. It was described afterward by his father Joseph Sr. as "a very private affair" that was officiated by a Jesuit priest. The nature of the ceremony in religious terms is unclear. This was four and a half years after his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and infant daughter, Naomi Christina Biden, died in a motor vehicle accident; Joe had proposed several times before she accepted, as she was wary of entering the public spotlight, anxious to remain focused on her own career, and initially hesitant to take on the commitment of raising his two young sons who had survived the accident. They spent their honeymoon at Lake Balaton in the Hungarian People's Republic, behind the Iron Curtain. She raised Beau and Hunter, and they called her Mom, but she did not formally adopt them.

She continued to teach while working on a master's degree at West Chester State College, taking one course per semester. She graduated with a Master of Education degree, with a specialty in reading from West Chester in 1981. The Bidens' daughter Ashley Blazer was born on June 8, 1981, and Jill stopped working for two years while raising the three children.

She then returned to work, teaching English, acting as a reading specialist, and teaching history to emotionally disabled students. She taught in the adolescent program at the Rockford Center psychiatric hospital for five years in the 1980s. Biden received her second graduate degree, a Master of Arts in English from Villanova University, in 1987. She was not considered a political person at the time, and during her husband's unsuccessful bid for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, she said she would continue her job of teaching emotionally disabled children even if she became the first lady. She taught for three years at Claymont High School. In the early 1990s, she taught English at Brandywine High School in Wilmington; several of her students there later recalled her as genuinely caring about them. In all, she spent thirteen years teaching in public high school.

From 1993 through 2008, Biden was an instructor in English at the Stanton campus of Delaware Technical & Community College. There she taught English composition and remedial writing, with an emphasis on instilling confidence in students. She has said of teaching at a community college, "I feel like I can make a greater difference in their lives. I just love that population. It just feels really comfortable to me. I love the women who are coming back to school and getting their degrees, because they're so focused."

Biden is president of the Biden Breast Health Initiative, a nonprofit organization begun in 1993 that provides educational breast health awareness programs free of charge to schools and other groups in the state of Delaware. She began the effort after four of her friends were diagnosed with breast cancer that year. In the following 15 years, the organization informed more than 7,000 high school girls about proper breast health. In 2007, Biden helped found Book Buddies, which provides books for low-income children, and has been very active in Delaware Boots on the Ground, an organization that supports military families. She runs five miles, five times a week, and she has run in the Marine Corps Marathon as well as the Philadelphia Half Marathon.

Biden later returned to school for her doctoral degree, studying under her birth name, Jill Jacobs. In January 2007, at age 55, she received a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in educational leadership from the University of Delaware. Her dissertation, Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs, was published under the name Jill Jacobs-Biden.

Biden has regularly attended Mass with her husband at St. Joseph's on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware. Whether she has ever formally converted to Catholicism, or explicitly identifies as a Catholic, has not been made public.

Role in 2008 presidential campaign

Despite personally opposing the Iraq War, Biden had not wanted her husband to run in the 2004 presidential election, to the point where she interrupted one strategy meeting discussing the possibility by entering in a swimsuit with the word "NO" inscribed on her stomach. But following George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, she urged her husband to run again for president, later saying: "I literally wore black for a week. I just could not believe that he won, because I felt that things were already so bad. I was so against the Iraq War. And I said to Joe, 'You've got to change this, you have to change this.'" During Joe Biden's unsuccessful campaign to be the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, she continued to teach during the week and would join him for campaigning on weekends. She said she would have taken an activist role in addressing education as her chief focus of concern as a potential first lady. She also said she would not seek inclusion in Cabinet meetings and that "I say that I'm apolitical if that's at all possible being married to Joe for 30 years."

Once her husband was selected as the running mate to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, she began campaigning again. She wore a Blue Star Mothers Club pin in recognition of Beau Biden's deployment to Iraq. She was not a polished political speaker but was able to establish a connection with the audience. She also made some joint appearances with Michelle Obama. Throughout the time her husband was running for vice president, Jill Biden continued to teach four days a week at Delaware Technical & Community College during the fall 2008 semester and then campaigned over the long weekend while grading class papers on the campaign bus.

Second Lady of the United States (2009–2017)

First term

Following the election of the Obama–Biden ticket, she and her husband moved into Number One Observatory Circle (in January 2009), the official vice presidential residence in Washington. But as the new second lady of the United States, Biden intended to keep teaching at a Washington-area community college, and several of them recruited her. In January 2009, she began teaching two English courses with an initial appointment as an adjunct professor at the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), the second largest community college in the nation. It has been rare for second ladies to work while their spouses serve as vice president, and Biden is believed to have been the first second lady to hold a paying job while her husband was vice president. In White House announcements and by her preference, she was referred to as "Dr. Jill Biden".

Catherine Russell, a former adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was named Biden's chief of staff for her role as second lady. Courtney O'Donnell, a former spokesperson for Howard Dean and Elizabeth Edwards, was named her communications director and Kirsten White, a lawyer at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, her policy director. As Second Lady, Biden had a staff of eight overall and occupied a corner suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

In May 2009, Obama announced that Biden would be in charge of an initiative to raise awareness about the value of community colleges. Biden continued teaching two English reading and writing classes at NOVA in fall 2009. In January 2010, she gave the commencement speech at the University of Delaware's winter commencement, the first such address by her at a major university. In August 2010, Biden appeared as herself in an episode of Lifetime's Army Wives, making it part of her campaign to raise awareness of military families.

In April 2011, she and Michelle Obama founded a national initiative, Joining Forces, to showcase the needs of U.S. military families. In September 2011, Biden lent her support to USAID's FWD campaign, a push for awareness surrounding the deadly famine, war, and drought affecting more than 13 million people in the Horn of Africa.

She continued to teach at NOVA; in Fall 2009 she received a two-year appointment as a full-time faculty member, and in Fall 2011 she was given permanent position as an associate professor. In this role she was teaching three English and writing composition courses two days per week. She made her position there as normal as she could, sharing a cubicle with another teacher, holding regular office hours for students, and trying to persuade her accompanying Secret Service agents to dress as unobtrusively as possible. Her students were often unaware of exactly who she was, referring to her simply as "Dr. B." She told a colleague, "My standard line when students ask me if I am married to the VP is to say that I am one of his relatives. That usually quiets them." She was known as a compassionate teacher who engaged with her students' lives, but also one who assigned a lot of homework and was a tough grader. Staffers recall Biden always carrying students' work around with her on trips, and Michelle Obama's recollection of her time traveling with Biden was simply, "Jill is always grading papers."

An examination by The New York Times of her e-mails while second lady concluded that, "she shared the perks of the White House with her teaching colleagues, arranging for tickets to White House events like a garden visit and a holiday tour. But she didn't appear to pull rank; when she needed to take time off work – to attend an event with the Obamas or go on an overseas trip with her husband – she requested permission from the college." In February 2012, she staged a "Community College to Career" bus tour with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis that aimed to showcase alliances between community colleges and local and regional businesses.

Her life with her husband at Number One Observatory Circle tended towards the informal and was centered on family and their nearby grandchildren. In June 2012, she published a children's book, Don't Forget, God Bless Our Troops, based around her stepson Beau's deployment. The same month, the Bidens' daughter Ashley, a social worker and former staffer at the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families, married Howard Krein.

Role in 2012 presidential campaign

In the 2012 U.S. presidential election, in which her husband was running for re-election as vice president, Biden played a modest role. She did not cut back on her teaching schedule and made few solo campaign appearances. This reflected her continuing distaste both for politics and for public speaking, even though the Obama campaign considered her valuable in connecting to military families, teachers, and women.

Second term

During her husband's second term, Biden continued to be involved with supporting military personnel, including staging multiple visits to the Center for the Intrepid rehabilitation facility for amputees and attending the inaugural Invictus Games in London. During the 2014 U.S. midterm Congressional elections, she campaigned for a number of Democrats, including some in high-profile contests such as Mark Udall in Colorado and Michelle Nunn in Georgia.

In May 2015, her stepson Beau Biden died from brain cancer. She later described the loss as "totally shattering. My life changed in an instant. All during his illness, I truly believed that he was going to live, up until the moment that he closed his eyes, and I just never gave up hope." She has said that she lost her faith following his death and stopped praying and attending church for four years, but later started to find faith again as a result of campaign trail interactions with people in 2019.

She was present at her husband's side in the Rose Garden on October 21, 2015, when he announced he would not run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the 2016 election. By her own account, Biden was disappointed by his decision, believing her husband was highly qualified for the position, and "would have been the best president".

Biden continued to teach at NOVA, handling a full load of five classes during the Fall 2015 semester. During 2016, she was present with her husband on a listening tour for Cancer Moonshot 2020, an effort he was leading. In March 2016, she headed the official party that welcomed American astronaut Scott Kelly back to Earth from his almost full year in space.

Subsequent activities

The former second couple launched the Biden Foundation in February 2017; with the purpose of allowing them to pursue the causes they cared most about, including focuses upon preventing violence against women, his moonshot initiative, and her interests in community colleges and military families. That same month, she was named board chair of Save the Children; she said, "I think [their] emphasis on education fits with my life's work." Her husband was seen as a popular ex-vice president, and she received a standing ovation when she was a presenter at the 71st Tony Awards.

In June 2017, the couple bought a $2.7 million, off-the-water vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, near Cape Henlopen State Park, where they planned to host members of their extended family. Their ability to purchase this family property was due in part to deals they signed with Flatiron Books upon leaving office, with Biden contracted to write one book and her husband two. By 2019, the couple reported some $15 million in income since leaving the vice presidency, including $700,000 in speaking engagements for herself. The couple also substantially increased their charitable giving during this period.

Jill Biden continued to teach full-time at NOVA after her husband left office, with a salary of close to $100,000. She was selected to give the keynote address at a commencement for Milwaukee Area Technical College in May 2017. She gave the keynote address at a California teacher’s summit in July 2017, emphasizing the importance of communities supporting their teachers given the emotional and circumstantial stresses they often have to function under. Then in May 2018, she gave a commencement address at Bishop State Community College in Alabama, telling the graduates that "Maybe like me, life got in the way and it's taken you a lot longer than you expected to get here today. ... Whoever you are, know this, if you can walk across this stage, you can do anything." In February 2019, she spoke to the graduating class of the Newport News Apprentice School, telling them she realized many of them were in complicated life situations with multiple responsibilities, and that "Sometimes your day is a jigsaw puzzle that never seems to get completed. ... But no matter where life takes you, as of today you are a master of a craft, a shipbuilder and a leader, and no one can take that away from you."

In May 2019, her memoir Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself was published. The book has little political content, instead focusing on aspects of family. In it she says that while she is "grateful" to have been Second Lady, "The role I have always felt most at home in is being 'Dr. B.'" USA Today called it an "often-poignant memoir that charts her journey from a rebellious teen to young divorcee to the second lady of the United States." Biden did some book signings to help promote the work.