Beau Biden

DOVER, Del. — He was the privileged son of a longtime U.S. senator and two-term vice president, yet Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III was no stranger to personal adversity.

When he was only 3, just weeks after his father, Joe Biden, had been elected to the Senate, the younger Biden was seriously injured in a 1972 car crash that killed his mother and infant sister.

After launching his own successful political career, Beau Biden was dogged by health problems. In 2010, he suffered a mild stroke at 41.

On Saturday, Beau Biden died of brain cancer, less than two years after he was diagnosed. He was 46.

Beau Biden was also a major in an Army National Guard unit that deployed to Iraq in 2008.