Roberta McCain was a woman who never slowed down

Roberta McCain died this week at age 108 ½. I was shocked when I got the call. How could I be shocked? Because when you live that long, your friends think you will live forever. I thought — and hoped — she would.

We often hear, when people die, the polite refrain that the person who has passed was one of a kind. But Roberta McCain truly was “one of a kind,” even though she had an identical twin, Rowena, who lived to age 99.

Our friendship started on the campaign trail, but it far exceeded journalism and politics. Practically every Sunday for 14 years, I would drive the one mile from my home to hers to have coffee. She insisted on a beautiful silver service, gorgeous china and Pepperidge Farm cookies. She was always dressed impeccably when I arrived — an elegant dress, sometimes a scarf around her neck, matching earrings, hair neatly coifed and that bright red lipstick.

I would try not to stay long and wear her out, but she was so charming and engaging that the time would slip away. Often her son Joe would join us and always her cat, Jake, who hated me and swung his paw and hissed if I came near. When I left, I would kiss her on the cheek or the top of the head, tell her I would see her the next week, and she would tell me that she loved me and that I was an angel. Who wouldn’t return weekly if she were called an angel every time?

She was born in 1912 — the year Arizona entered the union — in Muskogee, Okla., the daughter of an oil wildcatter who moved his family to Los Angeles when the twins were young. She married a young naval officer in 1933 — the couple eloped in Tijuana, Mexico, enraging her mother. Her father told Roberta that her mother, after learning of the elopement, had “blood coming out of her eyes.”

The McCains’ son John S. McCain III, the second of their three children, was born in 1936. As the wife of a fast-rising naval officer — John Jr. would go on to be a four-star admiral — Roberta moved constantly, adapted quickly and traveled widely. Years later, if I told her I had a work trip overseas to a particular foreign country, she would tell me to make sure I found the time to stop in a particular place in that country, and she would then go on to describe the place so colorfully that, well, I felt as though I had already gone.

Along the way, she had known or had met almost everyone of note and had stories to tell about many of them. She was also something of a prankster. Until her identical twin Rowena died, the two traveled the world together. No one could tell them apart, and they often switched identities to confuse people.

Roberta was famous for racing around in her car, and she could have a heavy foot. One day she said, “Don’t tell Johnny, but I got stopped for speeding a while back.” I wondered, who would give an elderly woman a ticket? Maybe a warning, but a ticket? I asked her how fast she was driving. She pulled out a piece of paper that said 112 mph. She explained that in Arizona, there are long stretches of empty flat roads, as if that somehow made it okay.

She didn’t want her son to know because he was in the middle of a campaign and he would be angry with her. So, I kept her secret. Others later gave her up, and of course it made the papers.

Secretly, I think she was proud of being a speedster.

She never let age stop her. And she loved a good party. When she came, at 107, to the “Full Court Press” launch party on a rooftop overlooking the Capitol a little more than a year ago, everyone wanted to meet her and have a picture taken with her.

She looked beautiful and was the talk of the evening.

But it was in private where she truly shone. On so many Sundays, she was something more than fascinating; she was comforting.

During times when my life hit rough patches, I could tell her anything and not worry she would “talk out of school.” She never did. When I unexpectedly got fired from a job after less than six months, she said I should not be too concerned because we live in a big world and there were great adventures ahead for me. I just had to grab them.

Turns out, she was right. Roberta McCain embodied the adage: Wisdom comes with age.

And while I surely know my faults, she never could see one. She was that kind of a friend.

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