Sponsor Message Up until her death in 2005, the woman known affectionately as “Mamaw” played a pivotal role in Vance’s life. As a boy growing up in the small industrial community of ...

The late Bonnie Blanton Vance meant a lot to Ohio Sen. JD Vance. Born in rural Kentucky, Bonnie was a source of stability for the senator. He grew up without his father around and watched his ...

If you knew anything about JD Vance before Donald Trump picked him to be his running mate in the 2024 presidential election, it's that he was raised by his tough-as-nails Mamaw. Which, as the ...

The former president, sitting in the audience, listened as Vance retold the tale of his “Mamaw.” “When Mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq in 2005, and when we went through her things ...

You knew J.D. Vance was going to make it all about Mamaw. America is a funny old place. Not many people know J.D. Vance’s grandmother, the person. A lot of them know Mamaw the literary character ...

In his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, Vance describes how Mamaw and Papaw migrated from Appalachian Kentucky to Ohio in search of work. They struggled with being cut off from their family ...

Poverty. His grandmother swooped in to provide consistency for him and his sister. He was grateful for his Mamaw’s steady presence even as she struggled to raise two grandchildren well into her 70s.

Known affectionately to JD — and readers of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” — as “Mamaw,” Bonnie is someone JD often speaks of in interviews and speeches. Read on to learn all about the ...