Roberta McCain, 106, cuts stoic figure at son’s memorial service

As her son lay in state in the rotunda of the US Capitol – an honor bestowed on only 34 other people since 1852 – Roberta McCain sat, stoic.

John McCain lies in state at US Capitol as great and good pay respects

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She called him “Johnny”. To the world, he was John McCain, a hero of the Vietnam war, a six-term senator and a Republican presidential nominee.

McCain died at home in Arizona last Saturday, at 81, after battling brain cancer. His mother, who is 106, will bid her final farewell when he is buried on Sunday at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The senator will also be remembered at the US National Cathedral in Washington on Saturday.

Roberta McCain had prepared for her son’s death before. In 1967, when his navy plane was shot down over Hanoi, she had presumed him dead. In fact he was held as a prisoner of war for nearly six years, during which time he was tortured.

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He served in the footsteps of his father, John Sidney McCain Jr. But he credited Roberta McCain for making an “enormous difference” in his life while raising three children around the world, what he called his “mobile classroom”.

“My mother’s extraordinary resilience made her the stronger of the two,” McCain wrote of his parents in a memoir, Faith of My Fathers. “I learned from my mother not just to take the constant disruptions in stride, but to welcome them as elements of an interesting life.”

Roberta Wright was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in February 1912. In 1933, at just 21, she eloped to Tijuana. She raised three children and followed her husband’s navy career but her rebellious streak never left her.

According to the late senator, it manifested itself on the road. His mother frequently acquired speeding tickets in her 90s, McCain said, and in 2006, in Europe, she was told she was too old to rent a car. So she bought one.

Roberta McCain became best known to the American public in 2008, during her son’s run for the White House. She spoke then of the strength of their relationship.

“I love him and he loves me,” she said. “What more do you want?”

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‘An American hero’: the life of John McCain – video