‘John treasured the academy’
McCain set his own path to Annapolis for the final time
John McCain’s burial Sunday will be a vivid reminder of how he’s setting his own path one final, and now enduring, time.
And he will forever be a part of the academy, old and new.
McCain is to be buried at the Naval Academy Cemetery, a place of “winding woods and paths,” a pastoral place where people can stroll, reflect and reminisce, wrote Edward Phelps Lull in a history of the academy.
McCain’s father and grandfather, both admirals, are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The U.S. senator from Arizona — a maverick until the end and now beyond — chose to be buried here alongside longtime friend Chuck Larson, a former academy superintendent.
A Vietnam War hero and 2008 Republican presidential candidate, McCain died Saturday at 81. He wanted the lasting serenity of the hallowed academy ground.
“The pull of the academy,” as Gordon Schaaf, an Annapolis resident and a classmate of McCain’s at the academy, put it.
In his memoir, published in May, McCain wrote how he wanted to “take my leave bound for a place near my old friend Chuck
Larson in the cemetery on the Severn, back where it began.”
Scott Shepard understood. “Graduates feel a very close relationship with classmates. It was the start of your service and your career,” said Shepard, president of the Annapolis chapter of the Naval Academy Alumni Association.
On a brutally hot, humid Monday afternoon, the burial site on a gentle hill was an isle of calm. A cricket or two chirped. An occasional jogger chugged by. The wind was barely noticeable.
What was evident was how this plot of land, on a peninsula surrounded on one side by the Severn River and on another by College Creek, said so much about McCain.
It’s a place of reflection, where old and new traditions are easily seen from the 150-year-old cemetery’s hill. The plots overlook Sherman Field, where academy graduates of tomorrow toughen up and learn how to become fiercely competitive. Just beyond that field is the river where the crew teams grunt and struggle.
Look to the right, across the small road, and a new cybercenter is being built.
Watching all this for eternity are McCain and Larson. McCain biographer Robert Timberg described them as a mismatched couple, the restless, impulsive McCain and the methodical, by-the-book Larson. Yet they were roommates in flight school and remained close over the years.
Larson, who died in 2014, went on to become academy superintendent on two separate occasions. The second time, he was brought in to restore the academy reputation after an early 1990s cheating scandal involving dozens of midshipmen.
He reserved four burial plots for himself, his wife Sarah, and McCain and his wife Cindy, who survives the senator.
Those eligible for burial in the cemetery include officers, midshipmen or enlisted Navy or Marine Corps personnel on active duty at the Naval Academy, Naval Station Annapolis or on the staff of the Naval Medical Clinic, according to the cemetery website.
Also eligible are “distinguished graduates,” as well as graduates who have been on active duty with the rank of rear admiral or brigadier general, as well as other designated by the academy superintendent or secretary of the Navy.
McCain, who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years, will join an elite group of Navy heroes.
Among those buried at the cemetery are Fleet Admiral Ernest King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations during World War II.
Admiral Arleigh Burke was also a Chief of Naval Operations, and his monument includes what the cemetery website notes is the USS Arleigh Burke, “the first in a class of guided missile destroyers named for him.”
Also visible: In front of Beach Hall is the grave of Capital Edward L. Beach Jr., the commanding officer of the USS triton, which the website says “sailed submerged around the world in a record-setting 84 days” The hall is named for Beach and his father, also a Navy captain.
It’s a fitting setting for McCain, academy alumni said.
After all, said Schaaf, “John treasured the academy.”