One of the last times Leonard saw Biden was at Biden’s mother’s funeral in 2008. We’re just generally happy for her.”Ī “Philly for Jilly” fan club, including some Upper Moreland High School alumni, has been helping the Biden campaign. “She was always willing to help with our whole class,” said Leonard, who was class president and still plans reunions for the Class of 1969. “As she got older, I watched everything she did - she put on makeup and when she would leave I’d try her makeup on.”Īt Upper Moreland High School, Biden was a good student, pretty, popular, and very involved in school activities, friend and classmate Liz Leonard recalled. She was there if I needed her,” Jacobs said. Her sister Bonny Jacobs - the one whose bully Biden punched - said Jill, as the older sister, was the leader of the pack. » READ MORE: Jill Biden says women in the Philly suburbs where she grew up ‘may determine the entire election’ They would drive through Philadelphia, passing rowhouses and the Nabisco factory before crossing over the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, Biden wrote in her 2019 memoir. She waitressed down the Shore in Ocean City.Įvery Sunday, the family would ride from Willow Grove to Hammonton for dinners with both sets of grandparents. Summers meant watching Phillies games with her dad on a black-and-white Philco.

Winters were spent sledding with neighborhood kids or skating on frozen canals in Yardley. She was there if I needed her.” Bonny Jacobs, Jill Biden’s sister It all contributed to what Biden described as a kind of Leave It to Beaver upbringing. “ Life’s a Lark at Willow Grove Park,” went a jingle for the amusement park. Willow Grove in the late 1960s was known for the amusement park that later became a mall and for small-town events like homecoming football games and fund-raisers for the local hospital.

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