About six months after my 18th birthday, my parents’ forewarnings came to pass. I worked an unpaid internship at a Texas newspaper, the San Antonio Light, where my dad was the assistant CEO. Early one evening, about three weeks into it, I was speaking with one of the newspaper’s oldest and longest-serving reporters, Frank Trejo.
Unlike many reporters who spent a life writing nearly every story carried out by car thieves, murderers, rapists, serial killers, cops gone bad, run-of-the-mill thugs, and politicians incapable of telling the truth, Frank wasn’t cynical. He was a happy-go-lucky man and, on this particular evening, dispensing advice to make me better in my chosen profession. I devoured his words like a famished kid and even took notes because that’s what good rookies do: Listen to those who’ve come before them.
Across the newsroom, eyeing the conversation, was another man. The fact that he couldn’t hear it didn’t matter. He was about 10 years older than me and about 45 years younger than Frank. Life was different for him; authority figures weren’t to be trusted.
“Hey, Trejo!” he screamed across the newsroom, standing behind a five-foot-tall partition where his pens, paints, paper and drawing board were kept for his editorial cartoons. “Are you trying to get a promotion – or a raise!?”
As much as the incident pissed me off – and I never mentioned it to my old man – this was exactly what my parents warned me about: People were going to look at me, the son of a prominent executive, and issue judgment because I was following dad’s footsteps.
To be the child of a highly successful executive is no easy path to travel, especially if you’re following them into their chosen career. It’s quite treacherous. As my parents warned me, all eyes are on that person.
They endure hushed voices as their colleagues issue biased, harsh, and, often, unfair convictions not only about their abilities and their work but also about what they wear, how they speak, and how they conduct themselves -- something they themselves likely never endured, especially with such furor.
One of the best lines I ever heard about my intent was six years later, during my first week in the circulation department, now called consumer sales, of a gritty tabloid newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, where my dad was the CEO. I suggested to one of the department’s mid-level executives, who was overseeing my entrée into the department, that I spend my first weekend shadowing one of the division managers so I could improve my understanding of how the paper was distributed and sold.
Nick Manzi called down to the city circulation manager, asking if there was anyone I could tag along with.
“What the hell does he want to do that for?” Ian Clark barked.
“He wants to work,” Nick replied.
Soon it was arranged, and I met the division manager at 6 a.m. on Sunday. We spent the day traveling in the city and around the greater Chicago area, visiting various retail outlets, newsstands and both airports, seeing how the paper was presented. We spoke with a few store clerks and managers, too.
I learned a lot that day: One of the reasons people purchased the Sun-Times instead of the Chicago Tribune was because it was far easier to read on a standing-room only El train into the Loop, where many of the city’s businesses were located. It also had the best sports coverage. And winning local teams helped sell copies – big time!
These lessons continued when I worked during the morning’s wee hours, filling the newspaper’s sales boxes – now artifacts from a bygone era – around the city, including those adjacent to Cabrini Green. I delivered copies in sub-zero temperatures, even blizzards, and retain harrowing memories of traveling on the Kennedy Expressway, with about a foot of snow on the ground and more falling, at 1 a.m. to get to a suburb, Wheeling, doing 360s on the highway as I drove one of the newspaper’s 1980s Chevrolet Caprices, which, in those days, were large, heavy, four-door gas guzzlers.
“You’ll have to work harder than the next guy,” Dad said before I joined the paper. “And you need to understand it better than everyone, too.”
Joan Kane, Dad’s executive assistant, provided even more cutting advice: Consider yourself a public figure, she said.
I picked up the hint.
Hunter Biden, the president’s younger son, fills me with empathy. Living in a fishbowl isn’t easy. He had no more control over his dad’s career than I had over my dad’s and the steps he took to ascend to the top of his profession.
Joe Biden did what was best for Joe Biden and, perhaps, as he contemplated each campaign, he thought about his family. Of course, this is something only those within the Biden inner circle will know.
But it’s a lesson. You can be incredibly successful, as the president is, but if your young are ensconced in legal issues, become front page news, or can’t seem to get a handle on their demons, that says something about the parenting.
It’s unfair. It’s harsh. It’s as unforgiving as what any child endures when following their parents into their profession or living in a fishbowl.
As these stories about Hunter’s legal woes, personal failings, and drug and alcohol abuse come to pass, there are likely many who wonder, me included, what kind of father Joe Biden was to him. Was he there for those critical moments when Hunter was much younger or during the teenage years, sometimes filled with danger and trepidation? What lessons did he impart, and what nurturing did he provide when Hunter was younger and into adulthood?
Parenting never stops. I know. I've got two in college.
As children grow up, they need their parents less. They’re making their way and their name in the world. But when the child is front-page news, and the articles are centered on legal woes and, sometimes questionable business affairs, some of it is a reflection on the parents.
Did Joe Biden set up his kid?
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