Death Elsewhere Roberta Wright Mccain
PHOENIX (AP)— Roberta Wright Mccain, the mother of the late Sen. John Mccain who used her feisty spirit to help woo voters during his 2008 presidential campaign, has died. She was 108.
A spokesperson for daughter-in-law Cindy Mccain says Roberta Mccain died Monday. A cause of death was not immediately released.
“It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my wonderful Mother In-law, Roberta Mccain,” Cindy Mccain posted on Twitter. “I couldn’t have asked for a better role model or a better friend.”
In a tweet, granddaughter Meghan Mccain thanked her “Nana” for teaching her how to live life with “grit, conviction, intensity and love.”
“There will never be another one like you, you will be missed every day. I wish my daughter had gotten to meet you,” said Mccain, who gave birth to her first child last month.
At 96, Roberta Mccain became the Republican senator’s secret weapon at campaign stops as evidence that voters need not worry about her son’s age — then past 70 — as he sought the presidency.
She once said her son liked to hold her up as an example of “what he hopes his lifespan will be.”
In August 2018, however, it was the mother who ended up mourning the son when John Mccain died of brain cancer. Despite being slowed by a stroke, Roberta Mccain attended the memorial and burial services in Washington and Maryland for the middle son she called “Johnny.”
She remained energetic and active into her 90s, traveling often with her identical twin sister Rowena, who died at age 99. She attended the 2008 Republican National Convention, where her son credited “her love of life, her deep interest in the world, her strength, and her belief we are all meant to use our opportunities to make ourselves useful to our country.”
It was 1933 when a 20-yearold Roberta Wright defied her family and eloped with John Mccain Jr. Documents released in 2008 showed that as a young ensign, John Jr. got into trouble when the couple decided to marry and he left his ship without permission.
“I got married young,” she told The Muskogee Phoenix in her native Oklahoma in 2008. “I was 20 years old, and it was the best decision I ever made.”
She married into a storied military family — her husband retired in 1972 with the rank of four-star admiral, the same rank held by his father, John S. “Slew” Mccain Sr. Her son was held as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam even as his father was commander in chief of Pacific forces in the late 1960s.
Roberta Mccain was a young woman when her three children were born, later telling the Oklahoma paper that she was “too young and irresponsible to know you were supposed to worry about them. I just let them go. I got a kick out of watching them.”