Relatively little has been written about the Biden family’s history, or about the life of Joe Biden, Sr. adamentous reports on the forgotten story of the President’s father.
In 1930, when Biden, Sr., was fourteen, his father was at the peak of his career. After receiving another promotion, Joseph Harry bought a duplex, the Biden family’s first house. But he soon fell into debt: in 1934, after he failed to keep up with tax payments, the house was sold at a public auction. That same year, he was demoted and sent to a branch in Scranton.
When Biden, Sr., got to Scranton, he met Catherine Eugenia Finnegan, his future wife. He graduated from high school and took a job at Amoco, despite his father’s troubles there. In 1937, Louis Blaustein died. After that, Joseph Harry said, there was “no warmth in the organization.” He later went with Biden, Sr., to the office of Louis’s son, Jacob, who had co-founded Amoco with his father. Jacob was away, but his secretary recorded a memorandum of what the Bidens said.
Over the years, Sheene, Sr., became a successful businessman. When the United States entered the First World War, he was working in roofing, and he won war contracts—as one newspaper put it, a “$1,000,000 job from Uncle Sam.” He got two big contracts to lay asphalt roofs on Army supply warehouses in Norfolk, Virginia. The Army wanted the roofs finished quickly, to expedite the delivery of critical supplies to American troops in Europe. But Sheene, Sr.
The Sheenes began to live lavishly, and Biden, Sr., benefitted from their newfound wealth. After his family left Baltimore, he returned during the summer months to stay with the Sheenes. He began leading something of a double life: in Wilmington and, later, in Scranton, he lived modestly—the purse strings drawn tight by his bitter, cash-strapped father—but in Baltimore he lived large, bankrolled by his spendthrift uncle. Every few years, Biden wrote, Sheene, Sr.
By the end of that year, Sheene, Sr., had his sights set on his next big project. America’s entry into the Second World War was fast approaching, and he had plans to get back into the war-contracting business, this time with Briscoe and Sheene, Jr., as his partners. Biden, Sr., would be their No. 1 employee.
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