At McCain's memorial, tears, laughs, and allusions to the man not invited

pulse 05:18 - 31 August 2018

Grant Woods, McCain’s first congressional chief of staff and a former Arizona attorney general, was even blunter.

PHOENIX — Sen. John McCain was remembered Thursday at a memorial service that evoked the one-time prisoner of war’s unbreakable will, the Arizona senator’s devotion to his adopted state and the maverick Republican’s willingness to break with his party to defend what he believed were his country’s founding principles.

While none of the friends, family members and fellow lawmakers who paid him tribute between song and scripture invoked the name of President Donald Trump, who was not invited, they held up the political values of the man they honored to draw an unmistakable contrast.

“John understood that America was first and foremost an idea, audacious and risky, organized around not tribe but ideals,” said former Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a Baptist church here that included thousands of mourners and nearly a quarter of the Senate.

“He would not stand by as people try to trample the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment,” said Woods, a Republican.

But the hour-and-a-half service honoring McCain, who would have turned 82 Wednesday, included more tears — and far more laughter — than it did high-minded political lectures.

And in a nod to McCain’s affection for the rites of tradition and his penchant for the irreverent, the ceremony got underway with a choir’s rendition of “Amazing Grace,” but his flag-draped coffin was taken out of the sanctuary by a military honor guard to the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.”

The Thursday memorial was part of a weeklong tribute to McCain, who succumbed last week to brain cancer. Following the service, the coffin carrying McCain was taken by motorcade to the Phoenix airport and transferred to military aircraft for one final trip to the nation’s capital. In Washington, McCain will lie in state in the Capitol on Friday before a memorial service Saturday at the National Cathedral. He will be buried near his alma mater, the Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, on Sunday.

But it was this state that McCain represented for 35 years in Congress. On Thursday, he was hailed as an Arizona icon in a ceremony suffused with the culture of the Southwest.

“He loved this place,” said Woods, “and if John McCain fell in love with Arizona, Arizona fell in love with John McCain.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.