John McCain, Gabrielle Giffords named 2022 recipients of Presidential Medal of Freedom

President Joe Biden will posthumously award the 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom to two Arizonans, the late Sen. John McCain, his friend and former colleague, and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who suffered a near-fatal gunshot wound in a 2011 assassination attempt near Tucson.

McCain and Giffords are among the 17 recipients of the award, the nation's highest civilian honor, announced Friday by the White House.

Biden and McCain, R-Ariz., served together in the Senate from 1987 until 2009, when Biden became vice president. Biden was President Barack Obama's running mate in the 2008 election when McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin topped the national GOP ticket.

The White House announcement recognized McCain's military service as well as his political service. McCain "was a public servant who was awarded a Purple Heart with one gold star for his service in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam," the White House said. He also served 5½ years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

After McCain's Aug. 25, 2018, death, Biden eulogized his friend at a memorial service at North Phoenix Baptist Church.

"Things have changed so much in America, they look at him as if John came from another age because he lived by a different code, an ancient, antiquated code where honor, courage, character, integrity, duty mattered," Biden said at the event. "The truth is John's code was ageless, is ageless."

Cindy McCain, McCain’s widow, crossed party lines in 2020 and endorsed and campaigned for Biden, who became the first Democrat to carry Arizona since President Bill Clinton did in 1996.

She is now serving in the Biden administration in Rome as ambassador to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Agencies.

On Twitter, Kelly tweeted Friday that he and Cindy McCain “might be the proudest spouses in Arizona right now.”

“I can’t think of two Americans more deserving of this honor,” Kelly wrote.

Giffords, D-Ariz., served in the House of Representatives from 2007 until 2012. Giffords, who is married to Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., sustained a near-fatal gunshot wound to the head in a Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting at a "Congress on Your Corner" constituent event outside a Tucson-area Safeway grocery store.

When the recovering Giffords made a surprise reappearance on Capitol Hill later in 2011, she was greeted by Biden, who had had two craniotomies. Biden, then vice president, told her that he and Giffords were "both members of the Cracked Head Club," according to an account at the time in the Boston Globe.

The White House noted that, before Congress, she was the youngest woman elected to the Arizona Senate, and that she later co-founded, with Kelly, the anti-gun-violence organization now known as Giffords.

Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., praised the decision to award the medals, the highest U.S. civilian honor, to McCain and Giffords.

"John McCain and Gabby Giffords have shown us all what it means to live a life of tremendous courage that exemplifies the very best of America," Stanton said Friday in a written statement. "Both of them personified a true Arizona spirit by demonstrating that we are not defined by what may knock us down, but rather by how we get back up."

McCain went through a grueling POW experience and later "was unrelenting in his service to our country and a purpose greater than any single person," Stanton said.

"When the unthinkable happened to Congresswoman Giffords, she rose with courage and limitless strength to serve as a voice of moral clarity, and continues to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others," he said.

Biden will present the awards July 7.

The other 2022 recipients are gymnast Simone Biles, the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history and an advocate for athletes' mental health and sexual assault victims; Sister Simone Campbell, an advocate for social justice; Julieta Garcia, the first Latina to become a college president; Fred Gray, a prominent civil rights attorney who represented Rosa Parks and one of the first Black members of the Alabama legislature after Reconstruction; the late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc.; Father Alexander Karloutsos, counselor to several U.S. presidents.

Khizr Khan, whose Army officer son was killed in Iraq and who was targeted by Donald Trump after speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention; Sandra Lindsey, the nurse who received the nation's first dose of COVID-19 vaccine; civil rights advocate Diane Nash; soccer star and advocate for gender equality Megan Rapinoe; retired U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming; the late Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO before his death; retired Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught, one of the most decorated women in U.S. military history; actor Denzel Washington, double Oscar-winning actor, director and producer; and civil rights advocate Raúl Yzaguirre.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: John McCain, Gabrielle Giffords to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom