http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...1.story?page=1
From the Los Angeles Times
McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship
The nature and timing of his divorce from Carol Shepp alienated key
friends -- and his version doesn't always match that in court documents.
By Richard A. Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

July 11, 2008

Outside her Bel-Air home, Nancy Reagan stood arm in arm with John McCain
and offered a significant -- but less than exuberant -- endorsement.

"Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we
endorsed," the Republican matriarch said in March. "Well, obviously this
is the nominee of the party." They were the only words she would speak
during the five-minute photo op.

In a written statement, she described McCain as "a good friend for over
30 years." But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by
McCain's decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly
close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young
heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.

The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern
California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series
of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time.

McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several
statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict
with the public record.

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had
separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs
would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce
would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did
not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his
court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that
year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed
between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2,
1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain
obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still
legally married to his first wife.

Until McCain filed for divorce, the Reagans and their inner circle
assumed he was happily married, and they were stunned to learn
otherwise, according to several close aides.

"Everybody was upset with him," recalled Nancy Reynolds, a top aide to
the former president who introduced him to McCain.

By contrast, some of McCain's friends, including the Senate aide who was
at the reception where McCain first met Hensley, believed he was
separated at that time.

Albert "Pete" Lakeland, the aide who was with McCain at the reception in
Hawaii in April 1979, said of the introduction to Hensley: "It was like
he was struck by Cupid's arrow. He was just enormously smitten."

As the pair began dating, Lakeland allowed them to spend a weekend
together at his summer home in Maryland, he said.

The senator has acknowledged that he behaved badly, and that his swift
divorce and remarriage brought a cold shoulder from the Reagans that
lasted years.

In a recent interview, McCain said he did not want to revisit the
breakup of his marriage. "I have a very good relationship with my first
wife," he said. In his autobiography, he wrote: "My marriage's collapse
was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity. The blame was
entirely mine."

Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, said: "Of course we will not
comment on the breakup of the senator's first marriage, other than to
note that the senator has always taken responsibility for it."

Carol McCain did not respond to a request for an interview.

About all she has ever said is this to McCain biographer Robert Timberg:
"John was turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again."

After leaving the White House, Carol McCain worked in press relations in
the Washington area, retiring about five years ago after working for the
National Soft Drink Assn. She now lives in Virginia Beach, Va., and has
not remarried. She has two sons from an earlier marriage: Andy, a vice
president at Cindy McCain's beer distributorship, and Doug, a commercial
airline pilot.

Carol and John McCain had a daughter, Sidney, who works in the music
industry in Canada.

John McCain, who calls himself "a foot soldier in the Reagan
revolution," said in his memoir: "My divorce from Carol, whom the
Reagans loved, caused a change in our relationship. Nancy . . . was
particularly upset with me and treated me on the few occasions we
encountered each other after I came to Congress with a cool correctness
that made her displeasure clear.

"I had, of course, deserved the change in our relationship."

Joanne Drake, spokeswoman for Nancy Reagan, did not return phone calls
seeking comment.



The first Mrs. McCain

McCain met Carol Shepp through a mutual friend and fellow midshipman at
the Naval Academy, from which McCain graduated in 1958. That friend,
Alasdair E. Swanson, married her in 1958. In the early 1960s, the
Swansons lived in Pensacola, Fla., where Alasdair Swanson and McCain
served as Navy pilots.

But that marriage ended in June 1964 after Carol sued for divorce,
alleging that her husband had been unfaithful.

According to McCain, he started seeing Carol shortly afterward. They
were married in Philadelphia, her hometown, in July 1965. McCain adopted
her two sons, and they had a daughter together. Then in October 1967,
McCain's plane was shot down and he was captured by the North Vietnamese.

She became active in the POW-MIA movement. A former model, she dedicated
herself to her children and kept the family together, friends said,
while awaiting his return.

"She had the perseverance to carry on," said Melinda Fitzwater, a cousin
of McCain's who later worked with Carol McCain at the White House. "She
had a little baby and small kids. She was a great, unique person."

On Christmas Eve 1969, while she was driving alone in Philadelphia,
Carol McCain's car skidded and struck a utility pole. Thrown into the
snow, she broke both legs, an arm and her pelvis. She was operated on a
dozen times, and in the treatment she lost about 5 inches in height.

After John McCain was released in March 1973 and returned to the U.S.,
he told friends that Carol was not the woman he had married.

Reynolds, working for then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, said she first
met the couple in San Francisco at a reception for ex-prisoners. She
later introduced them to the Reagans at their home in Pacific Palisades.

"They were just an attractive couple," Reynolds said. "The Reagans had
great admiration and respect for John."

In 1974, Reagan invited McCain to speak at a governor's prayer breakfast
in Sacramento. The former prisoner of war told the story of a fellow
captive who had scratched a prayer on a cell wall. Ronald and Nancy
Reagan were reduced to tears. It was "the most moving speech I had ever
heard," Reynolds said.

In the next few years, family and friends said, there was no sign that
McCain was unhappy in his marriage. Fitzwater recalled visiting the
family on Thanksgivings, and McCain seemed content barbecuing a turkey
on his outdoor grill near Jacksonville, Fla.

Navy officers in the squadron McCain commanded in 1977 said they did not
know anything was wrong. "When I went to parties at their home,
everything seemed fine," said Mike Akin, a naval flying instructor.
"They seemed to be a happily married couple."

But two years later, while on a trip as a Navy liaison with the Senate,
McCain spied Hensley at the Honolulu reception. In a recent television
interview with Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show," Cindy McCain joked about
how the Navy captain had pursued her. "He kind of chased me around . . .
the hors d'oeuvre table," she said. "I was trying to get something to
eat and I thought, 'This guy's kind of weird.' I was kind of trying to
get away from him."

John McCain was 42; she was 24. During the next nine months, he would
fly to Arizona or she would come to the Washington area, where McCain
and Carol had a home.

Carol McCain later told friends, including Reynolds and Fitzwater, that
she did not know he was seeing anyone else.

John McCain sued for divorce in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., where his
friend and fellow former POW, George E. "Bud" Day, practiced law and
could represent him.

In the petition, he stated that the couple had "cohabited as husband and
wife" until Jan. 7, 1980.

His wife did not contest the divorce, and Day said that the couple had
reached an agreement in advance on support and division of property. By
then she was living in La Mesa, in San Diego County, with the family of
Meese, a close Reagan aide and future attorney general.

"We knew John and Carol both since he came back from Hanoi in 1973,"
Meese said recently. "They have been friends of ours ever since.

"She was with us for maybe four or five months. Their daughter and our
daughter were friends, and they went to school together."

Carol McCain was distraught at being blindsided by her husband's
intention to end their marriage, said her friends in the Reagan circle.

"They [the Reagans] weren't happy with him," Fitzwater said. Carol
McCain "was this little, frail person. . . . She was brokenhearted."

By that time, Nancy Reagan had come to Carol McCain's aid, hiring her as
a press assistant in the 1980 presidential campaign.

When the Reagans moved to Washington, she was named director of the
White House Visitors Office.

"Nancy Reagan was crazy about her," Reynolds said. "But everybody was
crazy about Carol McCain. . . . And the Meeses were very generous and
helpful and comforting to her."

Fitzwater said that living in Southern California and working on the
Reagan campaign helped Carol McCain move past the loss of her marriage.

"It was perfect for her. She was traveling, and it took her mind off a
very, very sad time for her."


--
"The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade
and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion,
regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts
to weaken or undermine that right."

On Aug 10, 12:35*pm, hk wrote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...vorce11-2008ju...
*From the Los Angeles Times
McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship
The nature and timing of his divorce from Carol Shepp alienated key
friends -- and his version doesn't always match that in court documents.
By Richard A. Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

July 11, 2008

Outside her Bel-Air home, Nancy Reagan stood arm in arm with John McCain
and offered a significant -- but less than exuberant -- endorsement.

"Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we
endorsed," the Republican matriarch said in March. "Well, obviously this
is the nominee of the party." They were the only words she would speak
during the five-minute photo op.

In a written statement, she described McCain as "a good friend for over
30 years." But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by
McCain's decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly
close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young
heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.

The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern
California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series
of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time..

McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several
statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict
with the public record.

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had
separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs
would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce
would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did
not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his
court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that
year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed
between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2,
1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain
obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still
legally married to his first wife.

Until McCain filed for divorce, the Reagans and their inner circle
assumed he was happily married, and they were stunned to learn
otherwise, according to several close aides.

"Everybody was upset with him," recalled Nancy Reynolds, a top aide to
the former president who introduced him to McCain.

By contrast, some of McCain's friends, including the Senate aide who was
at the reception where McCain first met Hensley, believed he was
separated at that time.

Albert "Pete" Lakeland, the aide who was with McCain at the reception in
Hawaii in April 1979, said of the introduction to Hensley: "It was like
he was struck by Cupid's arrow. He was just enormously smitten."

As the pair began dating, Lakeland allowed them to spend a weekend
together at his summer home in Maryland, he said.

The senator has acknowledged that he behaved badly, and that his swift
divorce and remarriage brought a cold shoulder from the Reagans that
lasted years.

In a recent interview, McCain said he did not want to revisit the
breakup of his marriage. "I have a very good relationship with my first
wife," he said. In his autobiography, he wrote: "My marriage's collapse
was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity. The blame was
entirely mine."

Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, said: "Of course we will not
comment on the breakup of the senator's first marriage, other than to
note that the senator has always taken responsibility for it."

Carol McCain did not respond to a request for an interview.

About all she has ever said is this to McCain biographer Robert Timberg:
"John was turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again."

After leaving the White House, Carol McCain worked in press relations in
the Washington area, retiring about five years ago after working for the
National Soft Drink Assn. She now lives in Virginia Beach, Va., and has
not remarried. She has two sons from an earlier marriage: Andy, a vice
president at Cindy McCain's beer distributorship, and Doug, a commercial
airline pilot.

Carol and John McCain had a daughter, Sidney, who works in the music
industry in Canada.

John McCain, who calls himself "a foot soldier in the Reagan
revolution," said in his memoir: "My divorce from Carol, whom the
Reagans loved, caused a change in our relationship. Nancy . . . was
particularly upset with me and treated me on the few occasions we
encountered each other after I came to Congress with a cool correctness
that made her displeasure clear.

"I had, of course, deserved the change in our relationship."

Joanne Drake, spokeswoman for Nancy Reagan, did not return phone calls
seeking comment.

The first Mrs. McCain

McCain met Carol Shepp through a mutual friend and fellow midshipman at
the Naval Academy, from which McCain graduated in 1958. That friend,
Alasdair E. Swanson, married her in 1958. In the early 1960s, the
Swansons lived in Pensacola, Fla., where Alasdair Swanson and McCain
served as Navy pilots.

But that marriage ended in June 1964 after Carol sued for divorce,
alleging that her husband had been unfaithful.

According to McCain, he started seeing Carol shortly afterward. They
were married in Philadelphia, her hometown, in July 1965. McCain adopted
her two sons, and they had a daughter together. Then in October 1967,
McCain's plane was shot down and he was captured by the North Vietnamese.

She became active in the POW-MIA movement. A former model, she dedicated
herself to her children and kept the family together, friends said,
while awaiting his return.

"She had the perseverance to carry on," said Melinda Fitzwater, a cousin
of McCain's who later worked with Carol McCain at the White House. "She
had a little baby and small kids. She was a great, unique person."

On Christmas Eve 1969, while she was driving alone in Philadelphia,
Carol McCain's car skidded and struck a utility pole. Thrown into the
snow, she broke both legs, an arm and her pelvis. She was operated on a
dozen times, and in the treatment she lost about 5 inches in height.

After John McCain was released in March 1973 and returned to the U.S.,
he told friends that Carol was not the woman he had married.

Reynolds, working for then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, said she first
met the couple in San Francisco at a reception for ex-prisoners. She
later introduced them to the Reagans at their home in Pacific Palisades.

"They were just an attractive couple," Reynolds said. "The Reagans had
great admiration and respect for John."

In 1974, Reagan invited McCain to speak at a governor's prayer breakfast
in Sacramento. The former prisoner of war told the story of a fellow
captive who had scratched a prayer on a cell wall. Ronald and Nancy
Reagan were reduced to tears. It was "the most moving speech I had ever
heard," Reynolds said.

In the next few years, family and friends said, there was no sign that
McCain was unhappy in his marriage. Fitzwater recalled visiting the
family on Thanksgivings, and McCain seemed content barbecuing a turkey
on his outdoor grill near Jacksonville, Fla.

Navy officers in the squadron McCain commanded in 1977 said they did not
know anything was wrong. "When I went to parties at their home,
everything seemed fine," said Mike Akin, a naval flying instructor.
"They seemed to be a happily married couple."

But two years later, while on a trip as a Navy liaison with the Senate,
McCain spied Hensley at the Honolulu reception. In a recent television
interview with Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show," Cindy McCain joked about
how the Navy captain had pursued her. "He kind of chased me around . . .
the hors d'oeuvre table," she said. "I was trying to get something to
eat and I thought, 'This guy's kind of weird.' I was kind of trying to
get away from him."

John McCain was 42; she was 24. During the next nine months, he would
fly to Arizona or she would come to the Washington area, where McCain
and Carol had a home.

Carol McCain later told friends, including Reynolds and Fitzwater, that
she did not know he was seeing anyone else.

John McCain sued for divorce in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., where his
friend and fellow former POW, George E. "Bud" Day, practiced law and
could represent him.

In the petition, he stated that the couple had "cohabited as husband and
wife" until Jan. 7, 1980.

His wife did not contest the divorce, and Day said that the couple had
reached an agreement in advance on support and division of property. By
then she was living in La Mesa, in San Diego County, with the family of
Meese, a close Reagan aide and future attorney general.

"We knew John and Carol both since he came back from Hanoi in 1973,"
Meese said recently. "They have been friends of ours ever since.

"She was with us for maybe four or five months. Their daughter and our
daughter were friends, and they went to school together."

Carol McCain was distraught at being blindsided by her husband's
intention to end their marriage, said her friends in the Reagan circle.

"They [the Reagans] weren't happy with him," Fitzwater said. Carol
McCain "was this little, frail person. . . . She was brokenhearted."

By that time, Nancy Reagan had come to Carol McCain's aid, hiring her as
a press assistant in the 1980 presidential campaign.

When the Reagans moved to Washington, she was named director of the
White House Visitors Office.

"Nancy Reagan was crazy about her," Reynolds said. "But everybody was
crazy about Carol McCain. . . . And the Meeses were very generous and
helpful and comforting to her."

Fitzwater said that living in Southern California and working on the
Reagan campaign helped Carol McCain move past the loss of her marriage.

"It was perfect for her. She was traveling, and it took her mind off a
very, very sad time for her."


--
"The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade
and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion,
regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts
to weaken or undermine that right."

Great, the biggest low life liar on usenet questioning someone else's
honor.......

"hk" wrote in message
. ..



You left out the part whereby Carol McCain recently made a public
statement, saying that John McCain is a "good guy" and he is the best person
to become the next POTUS of those in the race.

Eisboch

Eisboch wrote:
"hk" wrote in message
. ..


You left out the part whereby Carol McCain recently made a public
statement, saying that John McCain is a "good guy" and he is the best person
to become the next POTUS of those in the race.

Eisboch


So what?

--
"The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade
and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion,
regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts
to weaken or undermine that right."

"hk" wrote in message
. ..
Eisboch wrote:
"hk" wrote in message
. ..


You left out the part whereby Carol McCain recently made a public
statement, saying that John McCain is a "good guy" and he is the best
person to become the next POTUS of those in the race.

Eisboch
So what?


"So what?".... you left it out or,
"So what?".... the ex-Mrs. McCain still thinks highly of him and thinks he
would be the best choice for President?

Eisboch

Eisboch wrote:
"hk" wrote in message
. ..
Eisboch wrote:
"hk" wrote in message
. ..


You left out the part whereby Carol McCain recently made a public
statement, saying that John McCain is a "good guy" and he is the best
person to become the next POTUS of those in the race.

Eisboch
So what?


"So what?".... you left it out or,
"So what?".... the ex-Mrs. McCain still thinks highly of him and thinks he
would be the best choice for President?

Eisboch




So what? McCain had an affair. Edwards had an affair. Clinton had affairs.

I don't give a damn about that, but...

If those affairs can help Obama defeat McCain, even a little bit, then I
think the Dems ought to Karl Rove it and find a way to use it. You
know...dirty politics, Republican style.


--
"The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade
and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion,
regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts
to weaken or undermine that right."

hk wrote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...1.story?page=1

From the Los Angeles Times
McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship
The nature and timing of his divorce from Carol Shepp alienated key
friends -- and his version doesn't always match that in court documents.
By Richard A. Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

Harry you should talk with someone who is a contemporary of McCain and
his first wife about their break up and divorce. I did this afternoon
and it isn't what you paint it to be. But, don't let that spoil your fun
of painting those you disagree with with as broad of a brush with the
wrong color.

Gene Kearns wrote:
On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:43:18 -0400, BAR penned the following well
considered thoughts to the readers of rec.boats:

hk wrote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...1.story?page=1

From the Los Angeles Times
McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship
The nature and timing of his divorce from Carol Shepp alienated key
friends -- and his version doesn't always match that in court documents.
By Richard A. Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
Harry you should talk with someone who is a contemporary of McCain and
his first wife about their break up and divorce. I did this afternoon
and it isn't what you paint it to be. But, don't let that spoil your fun
of painting those you disagree with with as broad of a brush with the
wrong color.

Since everyone able to read this is a "contemporary of McCain," why
don't you tell us what your, uh... "contemporary" said.

I certainly hope it is different than those quotes on record from the
first Mrs. McCain..... or, maybe your "contemporary" is more
"contemporary" than she is?


Are you still ****ed about the AFP thing Gene?