President Joe Biden will return to Scranton on Friday to deliver a eulogy for one of his closest childhood friends, Tom Bell Sr., a Bell family member said.
Bell’s funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. at St. Paul’s Church in the city’s Green Ridge neighborhood with a viewing at 9:30 a.m.
Bell, 81, a Waverly Twp. resident who grew up not far from Biden when the president lived here, died Sept. 18 after an illness.
Biden, whose family moved to Delaware where he became a U.S. senator, has frequently returned to the city since spending about five years of his childhood living in his grandparents’ North Washington Avenue home.
Biden counted Bell, along with Larry Orr and the late Charlie Roth, as his closest Scranton friends, and mentioned them in his autobiography and often in speeches.
He referred to all three in a statement issued to note Bell’s death. He eulogized Roth at his funeral after Roth died Sept. 30, 2000.
This will mark the president’s third visit to the city in the last 13 months and second for the death of a family friend.
He paid his respects at St. Peter's Cathedral in Scranton to the family of U.S. Sen. Bob Casey on Aug. 17, 2023, the day before the funeral of Casey’s mother, former Pennsylvania first lady Ellen Casey.
He also stopped at the Scranton Cultural Center at the Masonic Temple on April 16 when he was still campaigning for reelection. He dropped out of the race July 21.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story referred incorrectly to St. Peter's Cathedral as St. Patrick's Cathedral.
