Another bereaved member of my forum found this article on Presidents who lost children. It is from the New York Times:

Retrieved October 23, 2015 from the New York Times

Parental Grief Has Often Been a Factor in Presidential Politics

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced on Wednesday that he would not run for president, his reasoning coming as no surprise: His son, Beau, died of brain cancer in May at 46, and Mr. Biden lost valuable time to mount a candidacy as he struggled with his grief.

“Beau is our inspiration,” Mr. Biden, who turns 73 next month, told listeners in the Rose Garden. His son had urged him to run, but in the months following his death, Mr. Biden openly acknowledged his own fragility: sudden breakdowns, drained emotional reserves.

This is not the first time the nation’s political life has been roiled by excruciating grief of a parent who has lost a child. In 1900, as many as three in 10 infants in urban areas died before their first birthdays. No surprise, then, that many 18th- and 19th-century presidents suffered the loss of one or more children. Historians are still tallying the costs to both our leaders and the public.

Four of the six children Thomas Jefferson fathered with his wife, Martha, including their only son, died before they were 4 years old. William Henry Harrison endured the early deaths of six of his ten children, including three adult sons in the three years leading up to his election in 1840.

In January 1853, two months before his inauguration, Franklin Pierce lost his third and only surviving son, Benny, in a train accident. Pierce himself had to pick up the 11-year-old boy right after his “head was smashed to jelly,” as a New York Times correspondent reported.

A week later, Pierce wrote former Senator Jefferson Davis, who would serve as his Secretary of War. “How shall I be able to summon my manhood to gather up my energies for the duties before me, it is hard for me to see.” Indeed Pierce never rebounded, and his administration proved disastrous for the country.

Mr. Biden had wondered aloud and often whether he had the “emotional fuel” for intense engagement in public life, and in this there is ample precedent. Calvin Coolidge lost his eagerness to serve after his second son, 16-year-old Calvin Jr., died on July 7, 1924, of a staph infection acquired after playing tennis without his socks.

“When he died, the power and the glory of the presidency went with him,” Coolidge wrote in his memoir. The popular president withdrew, becoming much less involved in the nation’s affairs, and he did not seek re-election in 1928.

Similarly, Theodore Roosevelt was planning a political comeback until Quentin, the youngest of his four sons, was shot down by a German pilot in July 1918. That autumn, the 60-year-old Roosevelt told friends that “the world seems to have shut down upon me.” He died brokenhearted in January 1919.

“The American people expect their presidents to be superhuman, but in fact they sometimes have to deal with loss just like the rest of us,” said historian Jeffrey A. Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.

But while some presidents were drained by grief, others eventually rebounded with a renewed sense of purpose. After the death of the 11-year-old Willie, the third of his four sons, from typhoid fever in February 1862, Abraham Lincoln quickly pulled himself together and emerged an even stronger leader.

“Willie’s loss toughened Lincoln and made him more ready to commit troops to defeating the South,” said Harold Holzer, author of several books about the president. “He also became the consoler-in-chief for parents across the nation.” He had already lost Edward, his second son, at age 3 in 1850.

William McKinley forged a new identity after his only two children, daughters Ida and Katie, died early deaths. These losses fueled the young lawyer’s commitment to public service, leading to his first run for Congress in 1876.

Two decades later, just before McKinley won the Republican nomination, the prominent Washington journalist George Alfred Townsend observed that “his cross has become his passion.”

These days, mental health professionals agree that few life events are more devastating than the death of a child. “It’s every parent’s worst nightmare,” said Dr. Renee Binder, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and president of the American Psychiatric Association. “Parents are supposed to die first. It’s a violation of the natural order.”

Yet until recently, scholars rarely studied bereaved parents. For decades, the literature on grief was anchored mostly by the conceptual model devised by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: a progression through denial, anger, bargaining and depression before reaching acceptance.

Robert Neimeyer, a psychologist at the University of Memphis and editor of the journal Death Studies, calls the Kubler-Ross model “rusty and dusty,” arguing that “it is useful in its generalities, but fails in its particulars.”

Recovery is rarely so neat and predictable, Dr. Neimeyer said. Some bereaved parents rebound very slowly, if at all. Research suggests that about 30 percent will suffer from persistent, complex bereavement. They struggle with daily functioning for six months or longer after the loss because of intrusive thoughts on the deceased. Parents like Franklin Pierce who witness the violent death of a child are likely to fare worst of all.

“Complex bereavement is complicated and can also give rise to other psychiatric and somatic conditions, such as major depression and hypertension,” said Therese Rando, a psychotherapist who has written several books on grief.

On the positive side, studies also show that many bereaved parents experience what some experts call post-traumatic growth. Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, note that positive changes often emerge after a crisis, such as a greater appreciation of life and a greater sense of personal strength.

“But the growth doesn’t necessarily lead to a decrease in the distress — the longing or the grief,” Dr. Calhoun noted. “They tend to run on parallel tracks.”

The loss of Christine Reagan shortly after her birth in June 1947 may have increased the marital tension between Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman. But the death of Patrick Kennedy just 39 hours after birth led to a rapprochement between John and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Dwight D. Eisenhower would send his wife, Mamie, flowers every year on the birthday of his first son, Icky, who died of scarlet fever at age 3. George Bush kept a picture on his desk of his second child, Robin, who died at age 3 of leukemia.

With Mr. Biden’s withdrawal, there is still another candidate coping with this particularly tenacious grief. In 2009, Carly Fiorina’s 35-year-old stepdaughter, Lori Ann, died of a drug overdose. Like Mr. Biden, she has spoken bluntly of her pain.

The White House has often been home to parents who mourn lost children. But now they feel less need to hide the anguish.