Beau Biden

Beau Biden was special right from the beginning. I met him in 1973, when he was 4, a year after the accident that killed his mother and younger sister. His father Joe Biden had just been elected to the U.S. Senate.

As a kid, Beau always went by the rules. He became a natural leader. But he also had this inner drive to never cut corners.

Beau was like his father: his priority was protecting the powerless from the powerful. After law school, he went to work for the Justice Department and became involved in tracking child predators, work he continued as Delaware attorney general.

Beau joined the National Guard in 2003. He wanted to do his part to help prevent something like 9/11 from ever happening again. When he came back from Iraq, many urged him to run for his father’s Senate seat, but he felt he had to finish out his term. He was re-elected attorney general in 2010 by a huge margin.

Beau’s actions were not like those of most folks involved in politics. He broke a lot of the rules of how you advance your career. He never took the easy road. He would not allow things to be given to him; he wanted to earn them.

Beau had an unlimited future ahead of him. His passing has left a hole in many lives.

Kaufman served 22 years on then Senator Joe Biden’s staff and filled Biden’s Senate seat from 2009 to 2010