PHOENIX — A former vice president, an NFL star and other friends remembered Sen. John McCain as a “true American hero” — and a terrible driver with a wicked sense of humor and love of a good battle — at a crowded church service Thursday for the maverick politician that ended to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
Addressing an estimated 3,500 mourners, former Vice President Joe Biden recalled “the sheer joy that crossed his face when he knew he was about to take the stage of the Senate floor and start a fight.”
Biden, a Democrat who was among the fast friends the Republican senator made across the aisle, said he thought of McCain as a brother, “with a lot of family fights.”
The service for the statesman, former prisoner of war and two-time presidential candidate unfolded at North Phoenix Baptist Church after a motorcade bearing McCain’s body made its way from the state Capitol past Arizonans waving American flags and campaign-style McCain signs.
Family members watched in silence as uniformed military members removed the flag-draped casket from a black hearse and carried it into the church.
McCain died Saturday of brain cancer at age 81.
McCain’s longtime chief of staff Grant Woods, a former Arizona attorney general, drew laughs with a eulogy in which he talked about McCain’s “terribly bad driving” and his sense of humor, which included calling the Leisure World retirement community “Seizure World.”
Woods also recalled the way McCain would introduce him to new staff members by saying, “You’ll have to fire half of them.”
The church’s senior pastor, Noe Garcia, pronounced McCain “a true American hero.”
The service brought to a close two days of mourning for the six-term senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee in his home state.
A motorcade then took McCain’s body to the airport, where it was put aboard a military plane that flew to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, outside Washington ahead of a lying-in-state at the U.S. Capitol today, a service at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday, and burial at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, on Sunday.
Twenty-four sitting U.S. senators and four former senators attended the church service, according to McCain’s office.
Neither Biden nor other speakers uttered President Donald Trump’s name, but Biden made what some saw as a veiled reference to the president when he talked about McCain’s character and how he parted company with those who “lacked the basic values of decency and respect, knowing this project is bigger than yourself.”