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 "It is with great sadness that
I announce the death of my wonderful Mother
In-law, Roberta McCain," Cindy McCain wrote on
Twitter. "I couldn’t have asked for a better
role model or a better friend. She joins her
husband Jack, her son John and daughter Sandy."
She did not provide further details on the
circumstances of her mother-in-law's death.
McCain, who lived in Washington, was cherished
by her late son, who represented Arizona as a
Republican U.S. representative and senator for
35 years. She called him "Johnny" until his
death from cancer at age 81 on Aug. 25, 2018.
Roberta McCain's vibrance, charm and penchant
for speaking her mind made her a popular
attraction during her son's unsuccessful 2008
campaign for the presidency.
"I want to correct you when you start telling
all those big lies," she told him during a joint
interview.
McCain had taken his mother on the trail as a
living response to those who thought that at age
71 he was too old to be president. She was 95 at
the time, proving that longevity was a family
trait, he said.
McCain also liked telling the story about his
mother being turned down for a car by a rental
agency on a trip to France because she was 93.
Her solution was to buy a car and tour France as
she had intended. Afterward, she had the car
shipped to the U.S. East Coast and drove it
across the country.
She also was known for getting speeding tickets,
including one for driving 112 miles per hour
(180 kph) on a straightaway in Arizona.
Her son, John III, had a distinguished Navy
career like her husband, John McCain Jr.; and
father-in-law, John McCain Sr., with the two
elder Johns reaching the rank of admiral.
Roberta Wright and her identical twin, Rowena,
were born Feb. 7, 1912, in Muskogee, Oklahoma,
the daughters of a wealthy oilman, who taught
them to love travel by taking them and their
three siblings to sites of interest throughout
the United States.
Roberta later would take her own three children
on similar long educational road trips, as well
as regularly touring the world with Rowena while
they continued a gin rummy game that reportedly
lasted for decades.
ELOPING WITH THE ENSIGN
Roberta had been a student at the University of
Southern California when she met John McCain
Jr., then an ensign stationed nearby. Her family
did not approve of their relationship, so they
eloped to Tijuana, Mexico, in 1933.
As John Jr., who commanded submarines during
World War Two, rose in rank, the Navy sent them
around the world, including postings in London,
Honolulu, Connecticut, Washington and Panama,
where their son John was born.
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 McCain and her husband were
preparing to attend a dinner party in London in
1967 when they got a phone call saying John
III's fighter jet had been shot down in North
Vietnam. It was assumed he had been killed, but
the couple decided to go to the dinner and say
nothing.
A few days later, they learned their son had
survived but been captured.
"Can you believe that's the best news I ever
heard in my life?" Roberta said in a 2008
interview with C-SPAN.
John III was beaten and
tortured by the North Vietnamese during his
5-1/2 years as a prisoner of war.
"From both my parents I learned to persevere,"
McCain wrote in his 1999 book "Faith of My
Fathers." "But my mother's extraordinary
resilience made her the stronger of the two."
During his years in Congress, John McCain
developed a reputation as a maverick who did not
always follow Republican gospel and was willing
to work across the aisle with his Democratic
colleagues.
"I've inherited modest measures of her
qualities, sufficient to give me the energy for
a busy life and the enthusiasm for it. I'm the
son and grandson of admirals," he wrote in "The
Restless Wave," which was published a few months
before his death. "But I am my mother's son. I
always have been. Thank you, mother, thank you."
Motherhood was a role to which Roberta McCain
clung. After reading an excerpt of his book in
which he used a string of profanities on his
Vietnamese captors, she told her son she was
going to wash his mouth out with soap.
"He better never speak like that again or I'll
smack him bald-headed," she told Time magazine.
"Of course, he almost already is."
The Washington Post reported that McCain flew a
Taiwanese flag outside her Washington apartment,
which was located near the Chinese Embassy, on
the 50th anniversary of the Communist Party's
takeover in China.
McCain was survived by her son Joseph. Her
husband died in 1981 after 48 years of marriage,
and her daughter, Jean Alexandra "Sandy" McCain
Morgan, died in 2019.
(Writing by Bill Trott; Additional reporting by
Gabriella Borter; Editing by Diane Craft and
Peter Cooney)
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