Roberta Wright McCain, was the mother of Senator John McCain, whom at age 96 became a ‘secret weapon’ and used her feisty spirit to help convince voters during her son’s 2008 presidential campaign as evidence that voters needed not worry about his age past 70 as he sought the presidency. She died at 108.
An adventurous world traveler, Mrs. McCain was Navy through and through — the wife and daughter-in-law of admirals and the mother of the naval aviator, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was ... moreRoberta Wright McCain, was the mother of Senator John McCain, whom at age 96 became a ‘secret weapon’ and used her feisty spirit to help convince voters during her son’s 2008 presidential campaign as evidence that voters needed not worry about his age past 70 as he sought the presidency. She died at 108.
An adventurous world traveler, Mrs. McCain was Navy through and through — the wife and daughter-in-law of admirals and the mother of the naval aviator, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and who, for five and a half years, was America’s most famous prisoner of the Vietnam War. Senator John McCain of Arizona, said she had inspired his will to survive as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. When John McCain wrote a memoir about his experience as a POW for nearly six years in a north Vietnamese prison, he described times when he swore in English at his Vietnamese guards, who didn’t understand. His mother later told him: “Johnny, I’m going to come over there and wash your mouth out with soap.” He came home a war hero and, with his mother’s encouragement, began a political career as a Republican stalwart. He won two terms in the House of Representatives and six terms in the Senate, and he ran twice for the White House. In 2000, he lost the nomination to Mr. Bush, who went on to win the presidency; eight years later he won the nomination, but lost the election to Mr. Obama.
The senator, who died in 2018, said in 2008 that his “father was often at sea, and the job of raising my brother, sister and me would fall to my mother alone”. Her other son, Joseph, told the Associated Press in 2007 that the family had endless dinner-table discussions about history, politics and legislation led by their mother.
Roberta Wright was born 7 February 1912, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where her father was a businessman whose varied, colorful enterprise included bootlegging and oil wildcatting. The family moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1920s. She was a freshman at the University of Southern California in 1931 when she met Ensign McCain, a recent Naval Academy graduate. Her parents disapproved of their courtship, but the couple eloped and were married in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1933. They had three children, Jean Alexandra, John Sidney III and Joseph Pinckney II. Her husband commanded submarines in the second world war and was second in command of the cruiser St Paul during the Korean war.
After World War II, he held key posts including the navy’s chief of congressional liaison and the McCains kept a home on Capitol Hill. Senators, representatives and Pentagon brass were frequent visitors at their home, which later became the Capitol Hill Club. Along the way, she had known or had met almost everyone of note and had stories to tell about many of them.
The McCain matriarch’s spunky personality became the stuff of stories for the family and among those in their circle of Washington society. After her husband’s death in 1981, she remained energetic and active into her 90s, traveling often with her identical twin sister, Rowena who died at age 99, taking long driving trips through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Once, when she was denied a rental car in Paris because of her age, she went out and bought a car. On road trips in the United States, she accumulated numerous speeding tickets and was once clocked at over 100 miles an hour, her son once said.
Mrs. McCain was survived by her son Joseph; 10 grandchildren; 11 great-grandchildren; and seven great-great-grandchildren.
