With the final memorial service today and a private burial at the Naval Academy tomorrow, our country’s formal farewell to Senator John McCain will be complete. Although he never achieved the presidency of the United States, McCain played a major role in the governance of our country for many years, and despite political differences, his loss is being keenly felt on both sides of the aisle in D.C.
Many words have been written, tweeted, and spoken about this man, but perhaps none more striking than his own final words to the nation: “We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country, we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.”
I’m a staunch believer in the “we have more in common with each other” school of thought, the centerpiece of those final words. Who was this man? What did we have in common?
John McCain grew up in the culture of a military family. Most of us haven’t experienced that path, yet many follow a parent into the fields or the coal mines, or take on the mantle of medicine or ministry. For the McCains, service to country was what they did and what they do, instilled in their DNA. When John’s father was reassigned, they moved with him, not always welcome news to the kids, but they did what they needed to do.
When John left the navy to run for a congressional seat, he chose Arizona, the long-time home of his second wife, Cindy Lou Hensley. Accused of carpetbagging (moving to a location for political gain), his response is classic. “Listen, pal. I spent twenty-two years in the Navy. My father was in the Navy . . .I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.”
Yes, Hanoi, as in the North Vietnamese prison nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton.”McCain’s strong family heritage of military service didn’t guarantee smooth sailing for the young man and his family. Initially, John nearly didn’t make it out of the Naval Academy, picking up at least one hundred demerits each year and graduating fifth from the bottom in a class of 899. Yet his class ranking mattered little as he flew missions over North Viet Nam, and after his plane was shot down on October 26, 1967, he spent more than five years in that wretched prisoner of war camp.
With scars from his POW experience, a divorce from his first wife, several miscarriages with his second wife and her battle with pain killers, McCain carried on. His failed attempts to gain the presidency stung, and a terminal diagnosis of glioblastoma could have turned McCain to bitterness. But he credited his mother, Roberta McCain (surviving him at age 106), with forging a different path for him: “She taught me to find so much pleasure in life that misfortune could not rob me of the joy of living.”
Singer Geoff Moore asks: “What will be remembered of where I’ve come, when all is said and done?” Obituaries describe McCain as a rebel and a maverick. He is being mourned deeply by his beloved family. Yet perhaps what will be most remembered will be what McCain himself wanted. In a 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl, he spoke of his desire for his funeral to be at the Naval Academy, where a couple of people will stand up and say, “this guy, he served his country.” Patriotism may seem old-fashioned in today’s world, but there’s no argument here: Senator John McCain was a true patriot.
Rest easy, John McCain. We have the watch.
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