 He never forgot where he came from. It’s a familiar phrase in any Irish-American enclave across the country – from Boston to Butte, from the east side of Chicago to the west side of Manhattan. It rings of high praise, signifying the value placed on loyalty to the family and the community. It’s about a sense of place and a sense of identity. It’s about responsibility to those around you, even as you move up the ladder of success. It’s about roots, not in a genealogical sense, but in the way that American heritage – particularly in ethnic communities across America - has been shaped by shared memories of trials and tribulations, poverty and promise, defeats and victories going back generations. It’s what they’re saying about Senator Joe Biden, Barak Obama’s choice for the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, that he didn’t forget where he came from. Biden, the US Senator from Delaware has a distinguished career in public life for over thirty-five years. He’s mastered the intricacies of foreign policy and has been a strong voice for working men and women across America. He’s been on the world stage for three decades, and has served the people of Delaware – and the United States – well. But at the end of the day, Joe Biden is still the Irish Catholic kid from Scranton. He cites his early years in Central Pennsylvania as the most formative, where he learned the lessons handed down to him from his large Irish-American clan. His ancestors emigrated from Ireland to the United States in the mid 19th century, his biography states. His great, great grandparents, the Blewitts, were from County Mayo and eventually settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His grandfather’s family came from County Derry in Northern Ireland. Biden often says his mother – Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden – was and still is one of the main influences in his life, and describes her as “the soul, spirit, and essence of what it means to be an Irish American.” In an article published in the Scranton Times on March 17, 2006, Biden writes: “She taught us that you are defined by your sense of honor and you are redeemed by your loyalty. She is the quintessential combination of pragmatism and optimism. “My mother, I believe, is a living portrait of what it means to be Irish: proud on the edge of defiance. Generous to a fault; loyal to the end. She not only made me believe in myself, but scores of my friends and acquaintances believe in themselves.” Loyalty and honor have been trademarks of many Irish-American families - – and many other immigrant families for that matter – who have been beckoned to America by the promise of opportunity. He felt the same way about Green Ridge, the Irish section of Scranton where he spent his first ten years. “It was a neighborhood. It was a sense of togetherness. It was an ethic,” Mr. Biden told the Scranton Times. “To be Irish, was to be a Democrat, was to be a Catholic, there was no light between the three.” |