John McCain - A True Philadelphia Person
September 15 2008
John McCain has a Philadelphia story unlike any other. A wedding, car crash, and the Army Navy football game all take the spotlight of his story.
His first wife Carol Shepp McCain was a former swimsuit model, English major, and secretary who grew up in Lansdowne and also took residence in Philadelphia while the two were dating. She had a tragic accident during the time when McCain was a prisoner of war in north Vietnam during the Vietnamese War.
She was driving and hit an icy patch on Route 320 in Gulph Mills on Christamas Eve Night in 1969 while her husband was P.O.W. in Hanoi. Carol McCain had to spend the next 6 months in Bryn Mawr Hospital. Their daughter Sidney Ann McCain at the age of 2 stayed with her grandparents. Their 2 sons which John had adopted as his own stayed in Florida with friends of the McCain family.
“She told me she didn’t think she was going to survive,” now retired Dr. Willian Stewart, orthopedic surgeon said, “It was snowy and icy, and she didn’t think she was going to be seen.”
Carol McCain nearly died that night, but by the grace of god she did not. Doctors were able to save both her legs at the cost of rods being placed in them that left it very difficult for her to walk.
4 years later the two were reunited when John was finally returned home, and in very bad shape himself. Starved and with multiple fractures in both arms, John felt very good to be home. That is an image of him (above) shortly after coming home with his wife in the background smiling.
Seven years later John McCain filed for divorce from his wife Carol. He fell in love with somebody else who was 17 years younger than he. His ex-wife Carol did not hate him for this, she had always said she understood after all they had been through.
One of Carol’s friends who is a big supporter of John McCain said:
“She’s never been in love with anybody else, It would be a hard act to follow.”
Tags | John McCain, Politics