John McCain remembered by his daughter Sidney McCain
29 August 1936 – 25 August 2018
The senator’s daughter remembers an energetic father with whom she swam and bodysurfed and shared a love of travel – though she did not share his politics
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• Read the Observer’s obituaries of 2018 in full here
My earliest memory of my dad was when I was six years old. He’d just been released from captivity in Vietnam and my mom had rented a beach house for the three of us to stay in. I couldn’t figure out exactly who he was, because I had no memory of him – I was only nine months old when he was taken prisoner.
Being the youngest in the family, with two older brothers, I was very spoiled, but when my dad came back he was very strict and that was shocking to me. But he was also very loving. We lived in Florida and he taught me how to bodysurf, which he’d do with both hands behind his back because of his injuries from Vietnam. We’d be woken up in what felt like the middle of the night to go crabbing. My greatest memories are with my dad in the ocean.