New Kensington family recalls Biden sharing their grief, comforting a mother who lost son to brain cancer

Dolly Regoli wiped away a tear, paused and composed herself during an interview Wednesday as Joe Biden prepared to take the oath of office.

The new president many hope will heal the nation’s wounds has a special place in the heart of the 81-year-old New Kensington woman.

Three years ago, during a stop on a book tour in Pittsburgh, the man who would become the 46th U.S. president embraced and comforted Regoli as she shared the story of her son. Like Biden’s son, Beau, Johnny Regoli, 54, had died of glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer.

The family had buried him days earlier. Just five months prior, his sister, Sharon Regoli Ciferno, 50, a local middle school teacher, died of injuries she suffered in a tragic accident.

During their meeting, Biden embraced a weeping Dolly Regoli. He told her it was all right to cry. He told her she would be OK.

“You’ll know you’re getting through this when you can mention your child’s name and a smile comes before a tear,” he told her.

Then, he gave her his personal cellphone number.

“He said, ‘I’m going to give you my cellphone number, and, on those days when it’s so dark you feel you can’t get out of bed, you call me, and I’ll help you get through it,’ ” she said.

Her story echoes many others have shared of Biden’s personal outreach to those struggling with devastating losses.

David Regoli, the sole surviving sibling of John and Dolly Regoli’s close-knit immediate family, is still overwhelmed when he speaks of Biden’s kindness to his mother.

“My mom has never called him, but she keeps that card with his number close,” he said. “It’s like a comfort blanket to her.”

After his brother’s death, David Regoli said his mother spoke repeatedly of Biden and how he comforted Meghan McCain on the TV show “The View,” telling her she’d be OK after her father, Sen. John McCain, died of brain cancer.

He remembers Dolly Regoli saying, “I need Joe Biden to tell me I’ll be OK.”

David Regoli, 55, a former judge and Lower Burrell councilman, knew he had to find a way for his mother to meet Biden.

After learning Biden would be in Pittsburgh for a “meet and greet” during a book tour that February, Regoli got four tickets for the event. The Regolis would have an opportunity to meet Biden briefly when he stopped to promote “Promise Me, Dad,” a memoir that spoke of Beau Biden’s dying plea that his father not give in to grief. His oldest son died in 2015 at age 46. In 1972, Biden lost his first wife and their infant daughter in a car crash, with their two sons surviving.

“When we got there, we purposely hung to the back of the line. When the advance woman got to us, I told her my mom was going to need a few minutes with the vice president. I told her that we had just buried my brother, who died of a glioblastoma, and that my sister had died tragically five months earlier.

“When we got to him,” Regoli continued, “the vice president had his arms spread wide open. He said to my mom, ‘We unfortunately have something in common.’ He embraced her and let her cry for a few minutes. And then he started talking to my parents and asked about my brother and sister. It was all so genuine. He must have spent 10 minutes with us.

“Later, he asked me about my brother. He wanted to have a story to remember him by. And I told him how my brother was in the hospital when he heard John McCain had a glioblastoma. And how Johnny grabbed his cellphone and started calling people saying, ‘Please pray for John McCain. If anyone can beat this, it’s John McCain,’ ” David Regoli said. “When I told him that, he said he was flying to Arizona tomorrow to visit McCain and would tell him about it.”

John Regoli Sr., 82, a former state senator and Westmoreland County commissioner who spent decades in Democratic politics, was impressed with the care Biden showed to his family.

“I didn’t get the feeling that Biden wanted to impress me as much as he wanted to show empathy for me and my wife. That was it,” he said. “Every other politician I was involved with, politics was always behind everything. With Biden, I never got the feeling that politics was behind it.”

Dolly Regoli is a veteran of many political campaigns, including those of her husband and both sons. So she was disappointed when the coronavirus pandemic struck just as Biden’s campaign was getting underway.

“I wanted to go out and campaign for him, but I couldn’t. But I made sure all of my friends knew about him,” she said. “I’m just so happy. I know he’s going to turn this country around. He’s going to do so much good. It’s a new day today.”