Daughter’s statement:
Meghan McCain says dad was ‘hero’ to her.
After the death of Sen. John McCain on Saturday, his daughter Meghan McCain, who emerged as a leading voice on behalf of her father and issues important to him over the past year, took to Twitter to remember him as a “hero.”
Meghan McCain spoke publicly about her father numerous times after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2017. She often provided personal glances into his recovery at the family’s Cornville home on social media and mentioned him frequently during her daily appearances as a co-host of the ABC daytime talk show “The View.”
And she wasn’t shy about taking on critics or those who publicly made remarks she saw as insensitive to his health battle over the past year. Among those was President Donald Trump, who she called out in a tweet in June after the president again made reference to the senator’s famous “thumb’s down” vote that prevented repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2017. She called the president’s repeated reference at his rallies “gross.”
Meghan McCain seems to be the most similar to her father out of his five children: Her mother, Cindy, called her daughter “John McCain in a dress” in a 2010 New York Times profile.
Here is her statement following her father’s death:
“I was with my father at his end, as he was with me at my beginning,” she wrote just hours after the announcement of the 81-year-old’s death from brain cancer. “In the thirty-three years we shared together, he raised me, taught me, corrected me, comforted me, encouraged me and supported me in all things. He loved me, and I loved him. His love and his care, ever present, always unfailing, took me from a girl to a woman — and he showed me what it is to be a man.
“All that I am is thanks to him. Now that he is gone, the task of my lifetime is to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love.
“My father’s passing comes with sorrow and grief for me, for my mother, for my brothers, and for my sisters. He was a great fire who burned bright, and we lived in his light and warmth for so very long. We know that his flame lives on, in each of us. The days and years to come will not be the same without my dad — but they will be good days, filled with life and love, because of the example he lived for us.
“Your prayers, for his soul and for our family, are sincerely appreciated.
“My father is gone, and I miss him as only as an adoring daughter can. But in this loss, and in this sorrow, I take comfort in this: John McCain, hero of the republic and to his little girl, wakes today to something more glorious than anything on earth. Today the warrior enters his true and eternal life, greeted by those who have gone before him, rising to meet the Author of All Things:
‘The dream is ended: this is the morning.’”