CAROL MCCAIN

Carol Shepp McCain was born in 1937 in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. She attended Centenary Junior College for Women in New Jersey and first met John McCain while he was attending the Naval Academy. She married one of his classmates, and had two children, Douglas and Andrew, but divorced him in 1964. She and McCain re-met in Pensacola and they were married in 1965. Together, they had a daughter, Sidney. During McCain’s captivity in Vietnam, McCain raised the three children and became active in the POW/MIA movement. While visiting family in Philadelphia in 1969, she was in a car accident that almost took her life. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, she was four inches shorter and had some permanent challenges to her mobility. The couple divorced in 1980 due to McCain’s extramarital affair with Cindy Lou Hensley. Carol and John had become good friends with the Reagans after Vietnam, and Carol became a personal assistant to Nancy Reagan in 1979, focusing on Ronald Regan’s 1980 presidential campaign. After his victory, she directed the inaugural ball, became director of the White House Visitors Office, and managed many special and private social events. McCain left the White House in 1987 to become programming director of We the People 200 inc., an organization celebrating the 200th anniversary of the United States Constitution. By 1990, she was a spokesperson for Washington, Inc., a large event planning company. In 2003, she retired to Virginia Beach.