preview.tinyurl.com/6gbzhw -> www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html
Add to My Stories Add to My Stories Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain. While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream - a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country's future - McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation's tarnished reputation. Scroll down for more Carol McCain Forgotten woman: But despite all her problems Carol McCain says she still adores he ex-husband McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children. But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator's presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain's three eldest children. And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain's first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965. She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam's infamous Hanoi Hilton' prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news. But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries. When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self. Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering. For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later. Scroll down for more John and Cindy McCain Golden couple: John and Cindy McCain at a charity gala in Los Angeles Carol insists she remains on good terms with her ex-husband, who agreed as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn't the reason for my divorce. My marriage ended because John McCain didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to play the field'. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons. McCain was then earning little more than 25,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections. He first met Carol in the Fifties while he was at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was a privileged, but rebellious scion of one of America's most distinguished military dynasties - his father and grandfather were both admirals. But setting out to have a good time, the young McCain hung out with a group of young officers who called themselves the Bad Bunch'. His primary interest was women and his conquests ranged from a knife-wielding floozy nicknamed Marie, the Flame of Florida' to a tobacco heiress. She escaped a poor upbringing in Philadelphia to become a successful model, married an Annapolis classmate of McCain's and had two children - Douglas and Andrew - before renewing what one acquaintance calls an old flirtation' with McCain. It seems clear she was bowled over by McCain's attention at a time when he was becoming bored with his playboy lifestyle. He was 28 and ready to settle down and he loved Carol's children,' recalled another Annapolis graduate, Robert Timberg, who wrote The Nightingale's Song, a bestselling biography of McCain and four other graduates of the academy. Their daughter, Sidney, was born a year later, but domesticity was clearly beginning to bore McCain - the couple were regarded as fixtures on the party circuit' before McCain requested combat duty in Vietnam at the end of 1966. He was assigned as a bomber pilot on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin. He was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967 on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam and was badly beaten by an angry mob when he was pulled, half-drowned from a lake. war hero John McCain War hero: McCain with Carol as he arrives back in the US in 1973 after his five years as a PoW in North Vietnam Over the next five-and-a-half years in the notorious Hoa Loa Prison he was regularly tortured and mistreated. It was in 1969 that Carol went to spend the Christmas holiday - her third without McCain - at her parents' home. After dinner, she left to drop off some presents at a friend's house. It wasn't until some hours later that she was discovered, alone and in terrible pain, next to the wreckage of her car. When McCain - his hair turned prematurely white and his body reduced to little more than a skeleton - was released in March 1973, he told reporters he was overjoyed to see Carol again. But friends say privately he was appalled' by the change in her appearance. At first, though, he was kind, assuring her: I don't look so good myself. I thought, of course, we would live happily ever after,' says Carol. But as a war hero, McCain was moving in ever-more elevated circles. Through Ross Perot, he met Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California. John started carousing and running around with women,' said Robert Timberg. McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time, without going into details. Some friends blame his dissatisfaction with Carol, but others give some credence to her theory of a mid-life crisis. He was also fiercely ambitious, but it was clear he would never become an admiral like his illustrious father and grandfather and his thoughts were turning to politics. In 1979 - while still married to Carol - he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. It was a complete surprise,' says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide. They never displayed any difficulties between themselves. She justified his actions because of all he had gone through. "' Indeed, to many in their circle the saddest part of the break-up was Carol's decision to resign herself to losing a man she says she still adores. Friends confirm she has remained friends with McCain and backed him in all his campaigns. He was very generous to her in the divorce but of course he could afford to be, since he was marrying Cindy,' one observed. McCain transferred the Florida beach house to Carol and gave her the right to live in their jointly-owned townhouse in the Washington suburb of Alexandria. A former neighbour says she subsequently sold up in Florida and Washington and moved in 2003 to Virginia Beach. There, his new father-in-law...
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