McCain’s mother, now 106, a maverick in her own way
WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain’s rebellious streak didn’t come out of nowhere. His mother, Roberta, had a habit of speeding behind the wheel and racking up tickets. When told during a trip to Europe that she was too old to rent a car, she went out and bought a Peugeot. Her son once answered the telephone to hear his mother say she was on a crosscountry driving trip — by herself, in her 90s.
Now 106, the wife of a Navy admiral and mother of a Navy captain lived a life full of travel and adventure, punctuated by her sass and determination.
She once said her son liked to hold her up as an example of “what he hopes his lifespan will be.”
But in the end, she is mourning him instead of the other way around.
Though slowed by a stroke, she is expected to attend memorial and burial services in Washington and Maryland later this week for the middle son she called “Johnny,” the Vietnam prisoner of war, congressman, senator and twotime presidential candidate who died of brain cancer on Saturday at age 81.
The senator said in one of his books that “my mother was raised to be a strong, determined woman who thoroughly enjoyed life, and always tried to make the most of her opportunities. I am grateful to her for the strengths she taught me by example.”
McCain wrote in his final book, published this year, that his 106-yearold mother’s “vivaciousness is a force of nature” but that although a stroke has slowed her once-brisk pace and has made speaking a “chore,” she still has “a spark in her, a brightness in her eyes that would light up the world if she could resume her peripatetic life.”