Vice president's 92-year-old mother, Jean Biden, dies

WILMINGTON, Del. — Jean Biden, who raised son Joseph Biden to believe in what he called "America's creed ... everyone is your equal," died Friday. She was 92.

In a statement, Vice President Joseph Biden said she died in Wilmington, Del., surrounded by her family and loved ones. She broke her hip in a fall in March.

"Together with my father, her husband of 61 years who passed away in 2002, we learned the dignity of hard work and that you are defined by your sense of honor," the vice president said. "Her strength, which was immeasurable, will live on in all of us."

Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972, shortly before his 30th birthday. His mother helped by organizing coffee klatches, part of a family effort that included Biden's father, sister and brothers.

"Those of you who have met my mom, you know she's fairly politically astute, and she still runs the show," the vice president said shortly after she fell last year.

"You think I'm joking? I'm not," he said.

The former Catherine Eugenia Finnegan, who was known as Jean, was born July 7, 1917, in Scranton, Pa. In 1941, she married businessman Joseph Biden Sr., with whom she had four children. The couple moved from Scranton to Claymont, Del., in 1953, when their eldest son, Joe, was 10.

According to Biden's 2007 autobiography, "Promises to Keep," his mother had some reservations about whether he should risk a promising career as a lawyer to enter politics.

"You're not going to run for Senate and ruin your reputation, are you?" he recalled his mother asking.

"And once Mom was reassured that my future was safe, win or lose, she would do anything," Biden wrote.

Biden was elected vice president as Barack Obama's running mate. In his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, he paid tribute to his mother, who was in the audience, saying he had learned honor and loyalty from her.

"When I got knocked down by guys bigger than me, and this is the God's truth, she sent me back out the street and told me, 'Bloody their nose so you can walk down the street the next day.' And that's what I did."

Mrs. Biden leaned on her faith in comforting her eldest son after his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in December 1972, the month after he was elected to the Senate. His two sons were seriously injured.

"After the accident, she told me, 'Joey, God sends no cross that you cannot bear,' " Biden recalled.

In his autobiography, he recalled how when his mother couldn't find a pair of cufflinks for him to wear to an eighth-grade dance, she fashioned a pair from nuts and bolts, which mortified him. "Now look, Joey, if anybody says anything to you about these nuts and bolts, you just look them right in the eye and say 'Don't you have a pair of these?' " she told him.

In addition to the vice president, Mrs. Biden is survived by a daughter, two other sons, 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.