WASHINGTON — When Sen. John McCain died Saturday at 81, the tributes were quick to mention his family’s prestigious lineage within the American military. McCain’s father and grandfather — both of whom shared his name — were the first father and son in Navy history to become full admirals.
But often overlooked is the influence McCain’s mother, Roberta, had on his upbringing and political life. Now, at 106, she has outlived the child she still calls “Johnny,” whose death she faced once before when he was shot down over Vietnam and presumed lost. She is expected to attend memorial services in Washington and his burial in Maryland later this week.
Roberta, who lives in Washington, spent years crisscrossing the globe, often alongside her identical twin sister, Rowena, eager for whatever spontaneous adventure came next. She has ridden through the Jordanian desert in the dark of night, hopped a ferry to Macau and trekked through Europe on less than $5 per day.
Roberta and Rowena grew up traveling the country with their father, a successful oil wildcatter who retired young to raise his children.
Those trips would later serve as the blueprints for what Sen. McCain described as his mother’s “mobile classroom” — one that could show her children the world’s wonders in ways a four-walled classroom could not.
Roberta met her future husband, John S. McCain Jr., as a 19-year-old student at the University of Southern California. McCain Jr., known as “Jack,” was a young Navy ensign serving on the battleship USS Oklahoma.
Travel was a given for the wife of a naval officer, and Roberta and her children moved repeatedly, “always in the middle of a school term,” she said in a 2008 C-SPAN interview.
To round out her children’s irregular schooling, Roberta planned road trips to educational destinations. In his memoir, McCain wrote that the attractions included art galleries, museums, buildings designed by famous architects, natural wonders and the homes of famous figures. He had particularly fond memories of the Grand Canyon; Carlsbad Caverns; Natchez, Miss.; and Mount Vernon, in Virginia, to name a few.
In 1967, the McCains were in London when they received a call that their son’s plane had been shot down over Vietnam. Roberta believed Johnny was dead.
Instead, he’d ejected and been captured by the North Vietnamese.
“Can you believe that’s the best news I ever heard in my life?” Roberta told C-SPAN.
The next 5 1/2 years were agonizing for his parents and brutal for McCain, who was imprisoned, bayoneted, beaten and tortured by the Vietnamese. McCain was finally released in 1973.
For all her doting on her children and husband, Roberta took the reins of her own life too. In 2007, she described to the New York Times how she and Rowena would drive through the world’s open roads, always with Roberta riding shotgun as the navigator. Rowena died in 2011.
“She taught me to find so much pleasure in life that misfortune could not rob me of the joy of living,” McCain wrote of his mother.
It was that bond that followed Roberta on the campaign trail for McCain. During her 2008 C-SPAN interview, talk turned to why Roberta felt her son should be elected president. Roberta was then 95; her son, 71.
McCain had been criticized for being too old for the Oval Office, the reporter noted. But he always responded by pointing to his mother’s longevity.
“Well, of course,” Roberta said with a shrug and smile. “He’s glad to put me up as what he hopes his life span will be.”
