Mother hit presidential campaign trail at 96

FOR JOHN MCCAIN

Roberta McCain, an independent-minded oil heiress who was married to one of the U.S. Navy's highest-ranking officers and who displayed characteristic pluck when she took to the presidential campaign trail at age 96 on behalf of her son, Sen. John McCain, has died. She was 108.

Her daughter-in-law Cindy McCain announced the death in a tweet on Monday but did not provide details. Cindy's husband, John, died in 2018 of brain cancer.

The gregarious and stylish centre of gravity for her family, McCain raised three children and turned her home on Capitol Hill into a cocktail-hour salon for prominent lawmakers, aiding her husband's climb through the Navy ranks. She was known to make breakfast for politicians who were key to her husband's success. Her friends included the British military leader and statesman Louis Mountbatten and the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.

In 1967, she and her husband were in London preparing for a dinner party at the home of the Iranian ambassador when they learned that their son John, a pilot in the Vietnam War, had been shot down. The McCains went on with the dinner, sharing the news with no one.

Roberta Wright was born Feb. 7, 1912, in Muskogee, Okla., where her father, Archibald, bought land just before the oil boom. Awash in wealth, he retired young and moved his family to Los Angeles when Roberta was 12.

She did not emerge as a public figure until her son sought the Republican nomination for president in 2000, the first of two unsuccessful bids. She largely ignored that campaign, saying with typical frankness that she “never expected him to get elected, and didn't care if he was. I didn't think he had enough money, enough expertise, enough anything.”

Eight years later, she changed her mind about her son's prospects and became, to the dismay of her son's handlers, the straightest-talking member of McCain's “Straight Talk Express.”

She said Republicans unhappy with her son's independent streak would have to “hold their noses” and vote for him.

When John McCain's critics questioned whether he was too old to serve as president — he was 72 on Election Day 2008 — he simply introduced them to his mother.

Roberta McCain