Friends call McCain a hero

PHOENIX — A former vice president, an NFL star and other friends remembered Sen. John McCain as a "true American hero" — and a terrible driver with a wicked sense of humor and love of a good battle — at a crowded church service Thursday for the maverick politician that ended to the tune of Frank Sinatra's "My Way."

Addressing an estimated watched in silence as 3,500 mourners, former Vice uniformed military members President Joe Biden recalled removed the flag-draped "the sheer joy that crossed his casket from a black hearse face when he knew he was and carried it into the church. about to take the stage of the McCain died Saturday of Senate floor and start a fight." brain cancer at age 81.

Biden, a Democrat who McCain's longtime was among the fast friends chief of staff Grant Woods, the Republican senator a former Arizona attorney made across the aisle, said general, drew laughs with a he thought of McCain as a eulogy in which he talked brother, "with a lot of family about McCain's "terribly fights." bad driving" and his sense

The service for the of humor, which included statesman, former prisoner of calling the Leisure World war and two-time presidential retirement community candidate unfolded at North "Seizure World." Phoenix Baptist Church Woods also recalled the after a motorcade bearing way McCain would introduce McCain's body made its way him to new staff members by from the state Capitol past saying, "You'll have to fire Arizonans waving American half of them." flags and campaign-style The church's senior McCain signs. pastor, Noe Garcia,

Family members pronounced McCain" a true American hero."

The service brought to a close two days of mourning for the six-term senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee in his home state.

A motorcade then took McCain's body to the airport, where it was put aboard a military plane that flew to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, outside Washington ahead of a lying-in-state at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, a service at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday, and burial at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, on Sunday.

Twenty-four sitting U.S. senators and four former senators attended the church service, according to McCain's office.

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE Cindy McCain, back right, wife of late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., walks with son Jack McCain, back left, as they follow the military pallbearers carrying the late senator after a memorial service at a local church Thursday in Phoenix.