CINDY MCCAIN, WIFE OF JOHN MCCAIN, LAYS HER HEAD ON HIS CASKET DURING A MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR THE LONGTIME U.S. SENATOR IN PHOENIX ON WEDNESDAY.
PHOENIX • Arizona friends and family of John Mccain remembered the late senator at the state capitol on Wednesday, with Gov. Doug Ducey telling those assembled that Mccain’s “fight for America isn’t over.”
Mccain died Saturday of brain cancer.
On what would have been his 82nd birthday, Mccain’s body lay in state Wednesday at the Arizona Capitol, where several of his longtime colleagues delivered emotional tributes.
“While we grieve today, as a state and as a nation, John Mccain’s fight for America isn’t over,” Ducey said. “It’s a fight all Americans are obligated to continue on his behalf.”
While Barry Goldwater was an Arizona native, McCain was “Arizona’s favourite adopted son,” the governor said. Mccain was born in the Panama Canal Zone while his father served in the military.
“Imagining an Arizona without John Mccain is like picturing Arizona without the Grand Canyon,” Ducey said.
Former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl said he had been with Mccain all around the world and he had better instincts on when to assert U.S. power than anyone else he knew.
Kyl said he would miss McCain, whose greatest contribution was national security.
“I will miss him as a friend, and a strong force for America, and the world,” Kyl said.
“John Mccain believed in America,” Kyl added. “He believed in its people, its values and its institutions. He said he came to this realization during his time as a POW in Vietnam. ‘I fell in love with my country,’ he said, ‘when I was a prisoner in someone else’s.’”
Later in the afternoon, the Capitol will be opened to the public to pay their respects.
Arizona National Guard members carried the casket into the Arizona state capitol Museum rotunda, where McCain will lie in state.
Mccain’s daughter, Meghan, sobbed as the ceremony began, and later broke down in tears as she stood in front of her father’s casket and bid him farewell.
By the time the service ended and the rotunda was cleared, at least 100 people had already gathered outside to wait for the public viewing.
Chasity Pullin, whose husband and father are military veterans, was among those in line. She said she liked how Mccain didn’t act as though he was above others, and she praised all he did for veterans.
“It feels like you’re losing part of your family, as much as he did,” she said.
Ray Riordan, an 87-yearold Navy veteran who fought in the Korean War, came from Payson, Ariz.
“I grew up where a handshake was a contract and your word was your bond,” Riordan said. “He represented the last of that as far as I’m concerned.”