R.I.P. John McCain

On August 24, 2018, McCain’s family announced that he would no longer receive treatment for his cancer. The next day at 4:28 p.m. local time, he died.

John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American statesman who served as the senior United States Senator from Arizona, a seat to which he was first elected in 1986. He was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election, which he lost to Barack Obama.

John McCain was born on August 29, 1936, at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone, to naval officer John S. McCain Jr. and Roberta (Wright) McCain. At that time, the Panama Canal was under U.S. control.

McCain volunteered to fly combat missions in Vietnam in 1967, and narrowly escaped death during a fire aboard the USS Forrestal that killed 134 of his shipmates. Just months later, McCain, then a lieutenant commander, was shot down during a bombing run over North Vietnam. Already wounded, he was found and captured by enemy forces, who refused him medical treatment and stabbed him with a bayonet

While holding him as a prisoner of war, the North Vietnamese tried to exploit the fact that his father was a prominent admiral at the time. They offered McCain an early release. But he refused, adhering to the military code of "first in, first out." McCain was finally freed after five-and-a-half years, two of which he spent in solitary confinement. He limped off the plane that returned him to the U.S. gripping a handrail and with hair that had turned white, according to a New York Times report from 1973 on his release. The injuries he sustained would affect his mobility for the rest of his life.