The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind
By Sharon Churcher
Last updated at 1:45 AM on 08th June 2008
Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race
for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on
Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain.
While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the
American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised
on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s
future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero
whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the
United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation’s tarnished reputation.
Carol McCain
Forgotten woman: But despite all her problems Carol McCain says she
still adores he ex-husband
McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five
years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment
to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute
to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.
But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the
Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written
about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.
And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than
Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife,
Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they
married in 1965.
She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and
torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who
faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting
anxiously for news.
But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity
and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been
disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had
skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her
pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive
internal injuries.
When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving
surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons
had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with
it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was
forced to use a catheter.
Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John
McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore
little resemblance to her old self.
Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a
pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates
and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent
suffering.
For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the
accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where
she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south
of Wa****ngton, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in
1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona
brewing fortune, just one month later.
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Golden couple: John and Cindy McCain at a charity gala in Los Angeles
Carol insists she remains on good terms with her ex-husband, who agreed
as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life.
‘I have no bitterness,’
she says. ‘My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five
inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months.
It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce.
‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted
to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.’
Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They ****tray
the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his
crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling
on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.
McCain was then earning little more than £25,000 a year as a naval
officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a
multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections.
He first met Carol in the Fifties while he was at the US Naval Academy
in Annapolis. He was a privileged, but rebellious scion of one of
America’s most distinguished military dynasties – his father and
grandfather were both admirals.
But setting out to have a good time, the young McCain hung out with a
group of young officers who called themselves the ‘Bad Bunch’.
His primary interest was women and his conquests ranged from a
knife-wielding floozy nicknamed ‘Marie, the Flame of Florida’ to a
tobacco heiress.
Carol fell into his fast-living world by accident. She escaped a poor
upbringing in Philadelphia to become a successful model, married an
Annapolis classmate of McCain’s and had two children – Douglas and
Andrew – before renewing what one acquaintance calls ‘an old flirtation’
with McCain.
It seems clear she was bowled over by McCain’s attention at a time when
he was becoming bored with his playboy lifestyle.
‘He was 28 and ready to settle down and he loved Carol’s children,’
recalled another Annapolis graduate, Robert Timberg, who wrote The
Nightingale’s Song, a bestselling biography of McCain and four other
graduates of the academy.
The couple married and McCain adopted Carol’s sons. Their daughter,
Sidney, was born a year later, but domesticity was clearly beginning
to bore McCain – the couple were regarded as ‘fixtures on the party
circuit’ before McCain requested combat duty in Vietnam at the end of
1966.
He was assigned as a bomber pilot on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of
Tonkin.
What follows is the stuff of the McCain legend. He was shot down over
Hanoi in October 1967 on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam and was
badly beaten by an angry mob when he was pulled, half-drowned from a lake.
war hero John McCain
War hero: McCain with Carol as he arrives back in the US in 1973 after
his five years as a PoW in North Vietnam
Over the next five-and-a-half years in the notorious Hoa Loa Prison he
was regularly tortured and mistreated.
It was in 1969 that Carol went to spend the Christmas holiday – her
third without McCain – at her parents’ home. After dinner, she left to
drop off some presents at a friend’s house.
It wasn’t until some hours later that she was discovered, alone and in
terrible pain, next to the wreckage of her car. She had been hurled
through the windscreen.
After her first series of life-saving operations, Carol was told she may
never walk again, but when doctors said they would try to get word to
McCain about her injuries, she refused, insisting: ‘He’s got enough
problems, I don’t want to tell him.’
H. Ross P*****, a billionaire Texas businessman, future presidential
candidate and advocate of prisoners of war, paid for her medical care.
When McCain – his hair turned prematurely white and his body reduced to
little more than a skeleton – was released in March 1973, he told
re****ters he was overjoyed to see Carol again.
But friends say privately he was ‘appalled’ by the change in her
appearance. At first, though, he was kind, assuring her: ‘I don’t look
so good myself. It’s fine.’
He bought her a bungalow near the sea in Florida and another former PoW
helped him to build a railing so she could pull herself over the dunes
to the water.
‘I thought, of course, we would live happily ever after,’ says Carol.
But as a war hero, McCain was moving in ever-more elevated circles.
Through Ross P*****, he met Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California. A
sympathetic Nancy Reagan took Carol under her wing.
But already the McCains’ marriage had begun to fray. ‘John started
carousing and running around with women,’ said Robert Timberg.
McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time,
without going into details. Some friends blame his dissatisfaction with
Carol, but others give some credence to her theory of a mid-life crisis.
He was also fiercely ambitious, but it was clear he would never become
an admiral like his illustrious father and grandfather and his thoughts
were turning to politics.
In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail
party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around
the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage.
Carol and her children were devastated. ‘It was a complete surprise,’
says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide.
‘They never displayed any difficulties between themselves. I know the
Reagans were quite shocked because they loved and respected both Carol
and John.’
Another friend added: ‘Carol didn’t fight him. She felt her infirmity
made her an impediment to him. She justified his actions because of all
he had gone through. She used to say, “He just wants to make up for lost
time.”’
Indeed, to many in their circle the saddest part of the break-up was
Carol’s decision to resign herself to losing a man she says she still
adores.
Friends confirm she has remained friends with McCain and backed him in
all his campaigns. ‘He was very generous to her in the divorce but of
course he could afford to be, since he was marrying Cindy,’ one observed.
McCain transferred the Florida beach house to Carol and gave her the
right to live in their jointly-owned townhouse in the Wa****ngton suburb
of Alexandria. He also agreed to pay her alimony and child sup****t.
A former neighbour says she subsequently sold up in Florida and
Wa****ngton and moved in 2003 to Virginia Beach. He said: ‘My impression
was that she found the new place easier to manage as she still has some
difficulties walking.’
Meanwhile McCain moved to Arizona with his new bride immediately after
their 1980 marriage. There, his new father-in-law gave him a job and
introduced him to local businessmen and political powerbrokers who would
smooth his passage to Wa****ngton via the House of Representatives and
Senate.
And yet despite his popularity as a politician, there are those who
won’t forget his treatment of his first wife.
Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a
leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following
John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There
is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.
‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind,
he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him
knew it.
‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very
wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought
was better.
‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no
character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first
marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’
One old friend of the McCains said: ‘Carol always insists she is not
bitter, but I think that’s a defence mechanism. She also feels deeply in
his debt because in return for her agreement to a divorce, he promised
to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life.’
Carol remained resolutely loyal as McCain’s political star rose. She
says she agreed to talk to The Mail on Sunday only because she wanted to
publicise her sup****t for the man who abandoned her.
Indeed, the old Mercedes that she uses to run errands displays both a
disabled badge and a sticker encouraging people to vote for her
ex-husband. ‘He’s a good guy,’ she assured us. ‘We are still good
friends. He is the best man for president.’
But Ross P*****, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now
believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken
in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of
modern politics.
‘McCain is the classic op****tunist. He’s always reaching for attention
and glory,’ he said.
‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for
a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’
* Additional re****ting by Paul Henderson in Virginia Beach and
William Lowther in Wa****ngton
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