Whipsawed by family relocations, young John attended some 20 schools before finally settling into Episcopal High School, an all-white, all-boys boarding school in Alexandria, Va., in the fall of 1951 for his last three years of secondary education. The school, with an all-male faculty and enrollments drawn mostly from upper-crust families of the Old South, required jackets and ties for classes.
But the scion of one of the Navy’s most illustrious families was defiant and unruly. He mocked the dress code by wearing dirty bluejeans. His shoes were held together with tape, and his coat looked like a reject from the Salvation Army. He was cocky and combative, easily provoked and ready to fight anyone. Classmates called him McNasty. Most gave him a wide berth.
“He cultivated the image,” Robert Timberg wrote in a biography, “John McCain: An American Odyssey” (1995). “The Episcopal yearbook pictures him in a trench coat, collar up, cigarette dangling Bogey-style from his lips. That pose, if hardly the impression Episcopal sought to project, at least had a fashionable world-weary style to it.”
Some obits are reporting that John McCain was driven by “raw ambition.” In my experience he was driven by an inherited sense of honor and a ferocious love of country.
— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) August 26, 2018
"I will not take the low road to the highest office in this land. I want the presidency in the best way, not the worst way." _ Sen. John McCain, Feb. 19, 2000, after losing the South Carolina GOP primary.
— Ken Thomas (@KThomasDC) August 26, 2018
CNN reporting John McCain requested that both George W Bush and Barack Obama deliver eulogies at his funeral.
— Julie Cohen (@FilmmakerJulie) August 26, 2018
I love you forever – my beloved father @SenJohnMcCain pic.twitter.com/Y50tVQvlVe
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) August 26, 2018
“He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” pic.twitter.com/9j57TlkEcv
— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) August 26, 2018
John McCain: American patriot, war hero.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 26, 2018
Donald Trump: Draft-dodging weasel.
People reveal character in moments large and small. John McCain refused to be sent home early by his North Vietnamese captors hoping for a PR coup due to his Admiral father and thus served years more as POW. (
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) August 26, 2018
What made McCain remarkable in American politics is not that he was perfect but that he knew he wasn't.
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) August 26, 2018
With the passing of Senator John McCain, we have lost yet another link to the past where politics and civility went hand in hand. We face a harsh political reality. Thank you Senator for serving your country for 60 years.
— OM (@om) August 26, 2018
September 2017. McCain defends NFL protests: "That's their right to do what they want to do as citizens." https://t.co/pfgSk2m2m6 pic.twitter.com/2ZZHAJIGEd
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 26, 2018