Sen. John McCain’s mother dies at 108

Roberta McCain, the mother of the late Sen. John McCain, died Monday at age 108.

John McCain’s widow announced the death of her mother-inlaw, who helped preside over her war hero son’s funeral after he died of brain cancer in 2018.

“I couldn’ t have asked for a better role model or a better friend,” Cindy McCain wrote on Twitter.

Roberta McCain was born in 1912 in Oklahoma, where her father became wealthy in the early days of the oil industry.

She married Jack McCain, a Navy officer who rose to become an admiral.

The couple had three children, the most prominent of which was John McCain III, a Navy pilot who was famously shot down and taken prisoner during the Vietnam War.

John McCain became active in Republican Party politics and won a U.S. Senate seat in his adopted state of Arizona.

Sen. McCain was a staunch conservative but won a reputation as a maverick who sometimes defied GOP orthodoxy. He won the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, losing to President Barack Obama.

The senator went on to become an elder statesman in Congress and a bitter rival of President Donald Trump. While suffering from terminal brain cancer, he famously cast the deciding vote to scrap the Republican effort to trash Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act.

Roberta and Cindy McCain presided over John McCain’s funeral along with a bipartisan who’s who of political notables.

Cindy McCain is a well-known political figure in her own right and recently endorsed Joe Biden over Trump.