Cindy McCain's first year without John McCain: 'Trying to put our family back together'

Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” was playing from John McCain’s playlist as the senator took his final breath a year ago Sunday, out on the porch of his family’s home near Cornville, Arizona.

Cindy McCain, his widow, also remembers a hawk that nested on their property each year, swooping across the lush grass. It landed on a nearby tree, facing the senator’s family.

“And that was it,” she recalled this week in a den adorned with political memorabilia inside her north-central Phoenix home.

Their life together had ended after nearly 39 years of marriage, raising kids, welcoming grandchildren, traveling the world, grinding through two presidential races and six runs for the Senate, and facing the searing scrutiny of public life.

Before he died, they talked about what this would look like.

She knew what steps needed to be done.

But she wasn’t prepared for how difficult it would be to do it alone.

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She would return to the central Phoenix neighborhood where she grew up, a familiar place just off the sandy bridal path shaded by giant trees. When she wasn't with their kids, she would be working to grow the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University, the foreign-policy think tank that bears her husband's name.

It’s still difficult to return to the family's home in Cornville. Happy memories have, at least temporarily, been overshadowed by more painful ones. Even as she tries to heal by filling her time with work to carry on her husband’s legacy, she is helping her children cope with the loss of their father.

"My job is to make sure they’re OK — that’s my job," McCain said. "I have gotten calls in the middle of the night. I’ve gotten calls from ones I didn’t ever think that they would call me … Each situation is different."

Cindy McCain looks at a photo of her late husband, Sen. John McCain, in her Phoenix home on Aug. 19, 2019. The top photo is of McCain on a bus after his release as a prisoner of war.
Cindy McCain looks at a photo of her late husband, Sen. John McCain, in her Phoenix home on Aug. 19, 2019. The top photo is of McCain on a bus after his release as a prisoner of war.

The family lost its patriarch. The world, she said, lost a voice of reason.

The retired Navy captain and Vietnam prisoner of war had become a fixture in American and global politics before his death Aug. 25, 2018, at the age of 81. When he spoke to condemn the incivility and dysfunction that permeates American politics today, his voice was widely accepted as a counterweight to the combative style of politics and leadership embraced by President Donald Trump.

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After burying her husband at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland, she became chair of the McCain Institute. She is working to expand and develop new programs to combat human trafficking around the world, to develop new leaders in the mold of her husband, and to advance human rights and democracy by encouraging people to vote.

At the same time, she is working with ASU to construct a John McCain library, which would house his artifacts, writings and memorabilia. She envisions a research institute on par with presidential libraries that can host presidential debates.

In her mind, McCain sees a building with high glass to encourage open discussion. The desert terrain is perfect for an outdoor path for walking, she said, and she wants to work with a wildlife rehabilitation center as part of the project. A replica of the type of plane he was shot down in while flying a combat mission over North Vietnam, an A-4E Skyhawk, could hang from the ceiling.

McCain hopes to break ground within the next two years, depending on funding.

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Remembering McCain with an act of civility

To commemorate the anniversary of her husband’s death, she is asking Americans to perform an act of civility and post about it on social media with the hashtag #ActsOfCivility.

This could mean sitting down for a conversation with someone you disagree with or volunteering alongside someone you disagree with for a cause that benefits others.

This week, McCain plans on visiting elderly people at a local care facility where her mom once lived.

McCain mentioned the recent mass shootings when talking about the civility campaign.

“I’m no different from anybody else who lives here: I’m worried about our country right now,” she said. “How many shootings have we had, just in a two-week period? … I’m concerned about that as a parent, as a grandmother, as a citizen.

“... I would like people to take a step back and just remember: An act of civility can change someone’s life.”

McCain said she is troubled by the rhetoric surrounding immigrants and minorities. Investigators are treating the mass shootings in California and in El Paso as domestic terrorism. While the motive in the California shooting at a garlic festival remains unclear, the suspect in the Texas shooting posted a racist screed online and admitted to police that he traveled to El Paso to target Latinos.

“We are a country of diversity. We’re a country that has succeeded because of our diversity,” McCain said. “I’m not saying we don’t have problems — we do. But we are rich in heritage, right here in Arizona because of our Hispanic culture.”

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Condemning anti-immigrant rhetoric, McCain added: “It’s just wrong and it offends me as an American, and it offends me as John’s wife, as a McCain. He stood for so much more than that. And our country is better than that.”

She declined to comment directly about the president’s attacks over the past year on her husband, and his rhetoric.

“My message is more to my family and to my community and to the people that loved John and people that loved him but didn’t vote for him,” she said.

She likes to remind people of the moment during the 2008 campaign when the senator, who was running against Barack Obama for the presidency, corrected a woman at a town hall who said she couldn’t trust Obama because he was “an Arab.”

“No, ma’am,” John McCain said. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

His wife said: “I would have expected nothing less for him … I would hope people would remember things like that.”

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John McCain to be toasted on his birthday

This new chapter brings new traditions for McCain.

A baby is coming. A boy, the first child of their youngest son, Jimmy. She hopes he will be born on Aug. 29, her husband's birthday.

"I think he looks like John," she said of a sonogram photo of the baby that hangs on a wall near the kitchen.

On the eve of the anniversary of her husband's death, McCain will host a party with close friends and family to celebrate her husband. Last year around this time, the family threw a “Great Gatsby”-themed party at the cabin to say goodbye to him, knowing the end was near.

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“What he asked me to do after that, was, ‘Every year, I want you to have a party … and I want you to celebrate. No one’s gonna cry, no one’s gonna be upset,’” she recalled him saying.

The kids groaned, she said, when they found out he wanted his playlist — filled with Linda Ronstadt, Andy Williams and Frank Sinatra — on repeat.

They will toast him with a version of the Gibson, a martini-like cocktail with an onion. (He hated olives).

They will celebrate his birthday with family, friends and former McCain staffers on Aug. 29 at a local restaurant. He would have turned 83 this month.

'We’re still trying to put our family back together'

Looking ahead toward 2020, Cindy McCain says she doesn’t expect to get involved in politics.

A special election for the Senate seat once held by her husband could determine which party controls the Senate.

"I think I’m going to sit back and kind of see what happens," she said. "We’re still trying to put our family back together."

Have news to share about Arizona's U.S. senators or national politics? Reach the reporter on Twitter and Facebook. Contact her at yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Cindy McCain on her first year since husband Sen. John McCain died