Most Mourners Never Met McCain, but Loved Him

With 90-degree-plus Washington heat bearing down on them, thousands of mourners waited patiently on Friday afternoon to enter the U.S. Capitol and pay their final respects to late-Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona).

If there was anything that most of them had in common, it was that they had never met the late Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

But staffers on Capitol Hill, active-duty and retired military, tourists and people who came to Washington for the sole purpose of mourning McCain almost universally voiced deep affection and admiration for the late senator and Vietnam prisoner of war.

“I’m here to pay my respects to a hero,” Michael Mills, a civilian employee in the Pentagon, told Newsmax as he waited in line in the Capitol rotunda.

Mills said he “never met Senator McCain,” but quickly added that “my wife had a brief encounter with him and he took the time to talk to her and he paid particular attention to our child, who was not even two years old at the time.”

“That’s the kind of guy he was,” Mills added.

Mary Alice McCarty, a U.S. Navy wife during the Vietnam War, came to Washington with the sole purpose of paying homage to McCain.

“I remember when John McCain was shot down and captured in 1967,” she told us. “We were a divided country and I remember the Vietnam veterans were never treated with the respect they deserved when they returned. [McCain] was above it all.  Whatever you thought of the war, you had to agree he symbolized American values and he believed in love of country.”

“We’re a divided country today,” McCarty said. “But to me, John McCain is my president.”

Following tributes to McCain from House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence, the late senator will lie in state in the Rotunda until his funeral on Saturday.

McCain is only the 13th senator and 31st American to lie in state in the Capitol.