For hours Friday morning, President Joe Biden said nothing publicly.
Unlike last year when he visited Scranton to pay his respects when former Pennsylvania first lady Ellen Casey died, the president ignored reporters as he boarded Air Force One outside Washington, D.C. and deplaned in Pittston Township.
In Scranton, the president poured out his heart.
At St. Paul’s Church in Scranton’s Green Ridge neighborhood, he emotionally eulogized Tom Bell Sr., one of his closest friends from his Scranton childhood.
Bell, 81, died Sept. 18 at his Waverly Township home.
He and the president grew close because both lived about three blocks apart in the late 1940s and early 1950s. That was during the approximately five years Biden and his immediate family lived with their maternal grandparents at 2446 N. Washington Ave. in Scranton.
They stayed friends after the Bidens moved to Delaware where the president went from county councilman to U.S. senator to vice president and finally to president. For most of that time, Bell sold insurance and raised his family in Scranton.
“All the years later, no matter what was going on, I was his Joe and he was Tommy,” Biden told Bell’s friends and family in the church. “Nothing changed in our relationship. Nothing changed.”
Far away from St. Paul’s, Hurricane Helene ravaged Southern states, Israel said it bombed Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, the presidential campaign raged on. Before he left Scranton, Biden’s national security team even briefed him on the hurricane and the bombing, according to a White House report.
Inside St. Paul’s, it was about honoring “Tommy Bell.”
Biden entered at 10:59 a.m., briefly touched Bell’s casket, sat down in a front pew next to Bell’s widow, Ellen Bell, and listened attentively to the traditional Catholic funeral Mass.
A Catholic, Biden bowed his head, motioned in the ritual sign of the cross and kneeled at appropriate times. He took communion from Monsignor Neil Van Loon.
He watched and listened to the eulogy by Bell’s daughter, Megan Bell Giroux, who mentioned his 25-minute phone call with her mother and the family just hours before her father died.
“We are so grateful to you for not only being here but also providing your love and for the deepest and most sincere empathy during your phone call last Wednesday. She likes to talk, doesn't she?” Giroux said, referring to her mother.
That elicited laughter.
Giroux highlighted her father’s caring and generosity, saying he would give someone who asked for $20, $40 instead and treated everyone the same.
“Whether it was instantly connecting with the CEO on Wall Street, or whether he was chatting with the waitress, he was sincere in his curiosity and treated them all with the same respect,” she said. “His genuine nature made others feel comfortable.”
At one point, as Giroux choked up, Biden dabbed his eyes. After she finished and introduced him, the president and she embraced. She kissed him on the cheek.
For 11 minutes, the president had his own stories of Bell’s generosity of spirit. As a youth, Biden stuttered. Bell once said friends never teased Biden about that.
“Tommy would look at me and say, ‘Joe, I’m not kidding, you can do anything, you can be anything.’ He was like a coach,” Biden said. “He was a friend with a special heart who always put light in your heart.”
After he announced his 2020 presidential bid, Biden said, Bell immediately grasped the future.
“I remember when I announced for president, he told me, ‘You’re going to win,’” Biden said. “He believed it.”
Biden, who returned frequently to visit his grandparents after moving away, recalled he was baptized at St. Paul’s whose school he and Bell attended. Their families were friends well before that.
“Tommy knew how much I cared about the Bell family and how much I cared about Scranton,” Biden said. “Scranton climbs in your heart. There’s no way of getting it out, even if I wanted to. I don’t.”
He again recalled the story of how he, Bell, Larry Orr and the late Charlie Roth came home from movies at the old Roosevelt Theater on Saturdays. As the story goes, Biden and Bell climbed trees and skirted along rooftops, pretending they were characters in the movies.
“Tommy was an unusual man,” Biden said. “Everything was an adventure. Nothing was mundane. The ordinary was boring and the extraordinary was thrilling.”
Bell was “larger than life,” a man blessed with “a special grace who could laugh away fear.”
“Tommy lived the way we should, not reckless but still all out … nothing held back,” Biden said.
Biden said he broke the news that Bell died to his sister, Valerie Biden Owens.
“My sister Valerie, when I told her Tommy died, she cried on the telephone for about five minutes,” Biden said.
Twice, as he spoke, he teared up himself.
“I apologize, I’m supposed to be the president and not get emotional, but Tommy brings out all the emotion in me,” he said. “I could always count on Tommy and hope he knew he could always count on me as well … It’s a sad day.”
After his son Beau died, Biden said, he “found comfort here and in the church.”
“To Tommy’s family, I know it’s hard to believe, but having lost a son, a daughter, a wife … I promise you the day will come … (when) you open that closet and smell a fragrance … the memory of Tommy … will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye,” he said.
He thanked the family for allowing him to participate in the Mass.
As a string group played and a soloist sang a hymn, Biden helped push the casket down the center aisle to the church’s entrance.
There, he said goodbye to the family, walked back to the front along a side aisle, chatted briefly with Orr and headed out to deal with the world far, far away.
