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  • 2008-09-10 (xsd:date)
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  • John and Carol McCain (en)
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  • The text reproduced above is a shortened version of a June 2008 Daily Mail article about Carol McCain, Arizona senator John McCain's first wife, which was circulated as an e-mail forward at the time. A similar social media version made the rounds when John McCain passed away in August 2018: Shorn of their vitriolic and subjective comments, these article present factually true frameworks regarding the circumstances surrounding the break-up of John McCain's first marriage. On 3 July 1965, 28-year-old Naval aviator John Sidney McCain III married 27-year-old Carol Shepp of Philadelphia, whom he had initially met while attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, several years earlier. John McCain adopted Carol's two sons (Douglas and Andrew) from a previous marriage, and the couple had a daughter (Sidney) together in 1966. In July 1967, Lt. Commander John McCain was taken prisoner after his plane was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam and was held as a POW for over five years. During her husband's captivity, Carol McCain was involved in a near-fatal automobile accident that left her with permanent injuries, a circumstance that posed some difficult adjustments for the couple after they were finally reunited in March 1973: By the end of the 1970s, the McCains' marriage was strained to the breaking point, even if it was not evident to those who knew them: In 1979, then 42-year-old John McCain first met Cindy Lou Hensley, a 25-year-old school teacher who was also the daughter (and heir) of James Hensley, the founder of one of the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributorships in the United States; the two began dating and married the following year. Sources differ as to the timing of McCain's separation from his first wife, Carol, and the beginning of his relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, Cindy Hensley; whatever the circumstances, McCain remarried five weeks after divorcing his first wife: McCain stated in his autobiography that he was solely responsible for the failure of his first marriage: My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity. The blame was entirely mine. As for the subjective parts of the article, a number of different people who knew the McCains, including John and Carol themselves, have offered widely differing opinions and interpretations regarding John McCain's first marriage and the reasons why it ended — the why is a question with no definitive answer. It's worth noting, however, that John and Cindy McCain remained married for over 38 years, until the former passed away in August 2018; they had four children (one of them adopted) together; and that in a portion of the Daily Mail article referenced above (which was not included in the excerpt circulating via e-mail), Carol McCain was quoted as saying of her former husband: He's a good guy. We are still good friends. He is the best man for president. (en)
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