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."
Biden, 46, served in Iraq with the National Guard and had two terms as Delaware's attorney general. He was expected to run in the state's 2016 gubernatorial election.
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]