All About J.D. Vance's Parents, Mom Beverly Vance and Dad Donald Bowman (2024)

J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, was raised in the Appalachian communities of Ohio and had a difficult relationship with his parents growing up.

The Ohio senator’s mom, Beverly Vance, first welcomed his sister Lindsay in 1979 when Beverly was only 19 years old. Five years later, she and Donald Bowman welcomed J.D. on Aug. 2, 1984.

However, when J.D. was a toddler, his father walked out on the family, leaving him to his mother’s care. As J.D. was growing up, Beverly struggled with substance abuse and addiction, sometimes allegedly growing abusive toward her child. Eventually, J.D. was placed in the care of his grandparents, James and Bonnie Vance, who are union Democrats whom he credits for his upbringing.

"You’re not always going to agree with every vote that I take, and you’re not going to agree with every single amendment that I offer in the United States Senate, but I will never forget the woman who raised me,” he said in his victory speech, thanking his grandmother after he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.

J.D. wrote about his upbringing in his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which was later adapted into a movie with Amy Adams portraying Beverly and Glenn Close starring as Bonnie.

From how they affected his upbringing to what he’s said about being raised by his grandparents, here’s everything to know about J.D. Vance’s parents.

Beverly has two children

Beverly welcomed J.D.’s older sister, Lindsay, in 1979 before having J.D., born James Donald Bowman, with Donald in 1984. The siblings were raised in Middletown, Ohio, a town of primarily low-income residents, per J.D.’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

After the publication of his memoir, many residents of Middletown were upset at the portrayal of their home as a hillbilly town, which J.D.’s cousin Bonnie Meiber recalled him explaining in her personal essay for theJournal-Newsin November 2020.

“I don’t blame Middletown for the dysfunction that existed in our family,” he told Meiber. “Some of the Middletown defensiveness is rooted in pride of place. I’m proud of Middletown. I don’t disagree with that instinct. But you’ve got to recognize that because of forces outside of Middletown there are families who grow up below the poverty line. There is a lot of drug abuse.”

Donald walked out on the family when J.D. was a toddler

When J.D. was 6, his parents officially divorced after his father left the family a few years prior. He reflected in Hillbilly Elegy how his mother informed him of the divorce by telling him he’d never see his biological father again.

“It was the saddest I had ever felt,” he wrote in his memoir. “Of all the things I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures.”

Beverly was a nurse who struggled with substance abuse

Beverly worked as a nurse, where she had easy access to prescription medications, which she ultimately began to abuse. While J.D. was growing up, Beverly struggled with substance abuse, causing extreme dysfunction and often aggression at home, the senator wrote in his 2016 memoir.

At one point, Beverly was arrested when J.D. was 12 years old, causing him to feel terrified but also a sense of relief.

“In that moment I just felt relieved and I thought to myself, ‘Alright I’m going to live another day,’ ” he told Megyn Kelly in a 2017 interview. “I just wanted that situation to end and then I just broke down. I was just really sad and felt very lonely because I’m sitting in the back of this police cruiser, they just arrested my mom, the relief of having survived another day was gone and then I just wanted someone to come and take me away.”

Beverly was married five times

After splitting from Donald, Beverly was in a number of relationships, leading to a rotating door of father figures for J.D. She eventually married her third husband, Bob Hamel, who adopted J.D., renaming him James David Hamel, replacing her ex-husband's first name with her uncle’s name to preserve the “J.D.” nickname.

“This seemed a bit of a stretch even when I was six,” J.D. wrote in the memoir. “Any old D name would have done, so long as it wasn’t Donald.”

However, Beverly and Hamel eventually split, causing J.D.’s name to change again.

“One of the worst parts, honestly, was that Bob’s departure would further complicate the tangled web of last names in our family,” he wrote.

J.D. eventually took his maternal last name, Vance, once his grandparents became his caretakers.

J.D. was placed in his grandparents' care after Beverly allegedly abused him

As Beverly’s substance abuse issues worsened, she allegedly became increasingly abusive toward J.D. In one harrowing incident, J.D. was in the car with his mother when she allegedly sped up to “what seemed like a hundred miles per hour and told me that she was going to crash the car and kill us both,” he wrote in his memoir.

She eventually slowed down, so she could reach into the backseat to beat him, he alleged, and he hopped out of the car, running to a neighbor’s house who called the police.

J.D. was ultimately placed in the care of his grandparents, who he called “without question or qualification, the best things that ever happened to me.”

Donald reentered J.D.’s life when he was a teenager

When J.D. was a teenager, his father briefly came back into his life and renounced the now-VP candidate’s music taste, which included Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton.

“When we first reconnected, he made it clear that he didn’t care for my taste in classic rock, especially Led Zeppelin,” J.D. wrote in his memoir. “He just advised that I listened to Christian rock instead.”

J.D. became a devout Catholic later in his life, getting baptized in 2019 at 35 years old.