Beau Biden
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Beau Biden, the eldest son of Vice President Joe Biden, died of brain cancer, his father announced Saturday.

"His absolute honor made him a role model for our family," Joe Biden's statement read. "Beau embodied my father's saying that a parent knows success when his child turns out better than he did."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

President Barack Obama also commemorated Biden in a statement Saturday night. Julie Kliegman

"I have believed the best of every man," wrote the poet William Butler Yeats, "And find that to believe it is enough to make a bad man show him at his best or even a good man swing his lantern higher."Beau Biden believed the best of us all. For him, and for his family, we swing our lanterns higher. [White House]

Explore More
Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.