Early life and education of Joe Biden
Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr. (1915–2002) and Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Finnegan (born 1918). He was the first of four siblings and is of Irish descent. He has two brothers, James Brian Biden and Francis W. Biden, and a sister, Valerie (Biden) Owens.
The Scranton area was in economic decline during the 1950s, and Biden's father could not find enough work. The Biden family moved to Claymont, Delaware, when Biden was 10 years old, and he grew up in suburban New Castle County, Delaware. His father then prospered as a car salesman and the family's circumstances were middle class. One of his grandfathers was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate. Biden suffered from stuttering through much of his childhood and into his twenties; he overcame it via long hours spent reciting poetry in front of a mirror. Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont, where he was athletically, not academically, oriented and a natural leader among the students. He graduated in 1961.
Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and political science in 1965, ranked 506th of 688 in his class.
He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968, where by his own description he underperformed. During his first year there, he was accused of having plagiarized 5 of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden said it was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and he was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record. He was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.
Biden received five student draft deferments during this period, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War. In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager. Biden was not a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement; he would later say that at the time he was preoccupied with marriage and law school, and that he "wore sports coats ... not tie-dyed".
This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
Video: Senator Joe Biden talks about his Scranton roots
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