GREGARIOUS MOTHER OF SEN. JOHN MCCAIN

Roberta McCain, an independent-minded oil heiress who was married to one of the Navy’s highest-ranking officers and who displayed characteristic pluck when she took to the presidential campaign trail at age 96 on behalf of her son, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, died Monday at her home in Washington. She was 108.

Her daughter-in-law Cindy McCain announced the death in a tweet on Monday but did not provide further details. Cindy’s husband, John, died in August 2018 of brain cancer.

McCain was the gregarious and stylish center of gravity for her family, which was near the center of American military and political power for more than a halfcentury. Her father-in-law, John S. McCain Sr., a fourstar Navy admiral, commanded forces in the Pacific during World War II; her husband, John S. McCain Jr., another four-star Navy admiral, led the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and commanded U.S. forces in the Pacific during the Vietnam War.

In 1967, she and her husband were in London preparing for a dinner party at the home of the Iranian ambassador when they learned that their son John, a Navy pilot in the Vietnam War, had been shot down over Hanoi. The McCains went on with the dinner, sharing the news with no one.

A week later, McCain sent a letter to President Lyndon Johnson.

“As the parent of a son who was shot down in Hanoi last week and is now a prisoner of war, I wonder if you are interested to know that both my husband and I back you and your policies 100 percent in Vietnam,” she wrote. “One reads so much of other opinions, that I just hope that you and the people really making the sacrifice believe in our country and in you. May God bless you and keep you strong in your courage and convictions.”

John McCain III endured isolation and torture for the next 51⁄ 2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. McCain, who could only wonder about her son’s mental and physical condition, remained stoic.