#Jill Biden recalls family struggles in endorsement of husband at DNC

Longtime teacher Jill Biden was back in the classroom Tuesday night to vouch for her husband’s ability to lead the nation in a speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

Speaking from Brandywine High School in Wilmington, Del., where she worked as an English teacher in the 1990s, Jill, 69, gave a deeply personal endorsement of Joe Biden as she offered a glimpse into their family’s struggle.

“I fell in love with a man and two little boys standing in the wreckage of unthinkable loss,” she said, recalling the 1972 car crash that killed her husband’s first wife and his daughter.

“How do you make a broken family whole?” Jill asked. “The same way you make a nation whole. With love and understanding, and with small acts of kindness. With bravery. With unwavering faith.”

The pair married four years later and Jill helped raise Joe’s surviving sons, Beau and Hunter, before giving birth to daughter Ashley in 1981. The couple weathered tragedy together when Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.

“There are times when I couldn’t imagine how he did it — how he put one foot in front of the other and kept going,” Jill said of her husband.

“But I’ve always understood why he did it… He does it for you.”

The former second lady — who continued teaching at a community college during Joe’s eight years in the White House as Barack Obama’s veep — also spoke about her work as an educator.

She described “the anxiety that echoes down empty hallways” amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“There’s no scent of new notebooks or freshly waxed floors. The rooms are dark as the bright young faces that should fill them are now confined to boxes on a computer screen.”

But Jill — who has been a prolific surrogate on her husband’s campaign this year — ended on a rousing note by saying, “You can hear the sparks of change in the air.”

“If we entrust this nation to Joe, he will do for your family what he did for ours,” she said, “bring us together and make us whole, carry us forward in our time of need, keep the promise of America, for all of us.”

Following her address, 77-year-old Joe greeted his wife with a hug, saying: “Hey, everyone, I’m Jill Biden’s husband.”

“You can see why she’s the love of my life and the rock of our family,” he added, before oddly calling Jill his “first lady, lady, lady.”

“She has a backbone like a ramrod,” Joe said. “She loves fiercely, cares deeply. Nothing stops her when she sets her mind to getting something right.”