Forty-five years ago, gaunt and walking with a limp, Navy Lt. Cmdr. John McCain was released from North Vietnamese custody after more than five brutal years as a prisoner of war.
McCain entered a new phase of life, one that would lead to his becoming one of the most celebrated politicians in the world.
"Dressed in cheap civilian clothes, we boarded buses for Gia Lam airport on the outskirts of Hanoi," McCain would write years later in his 1999 memoir, "Faith of My Fathers". "As I stepped off the bus at the edge of the airport tarmac, I saw a big, green, beautiful American C-141 transport plane waiting to take us to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. I nearly cried at the sight of it."
McCain, 36 years old at the time of his release, on March 14, 1973, would in less than 10 years be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona.
Four years after that, he would succeed the iconic Barry Goldwater in the U.S. Senate. He would win re-election to the Senate five times and make two runs for the White House, in 2000 and 2008, clinching the Republican presidential nomination the second time but losing the general election to Democratic rival Barack Obama.
On July 29, 1967, he narrowly avoided fiery death aboard the On July 29, 1967, he narrowly avoided fiery death aboard the USS Forrestal, another aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin that erupted into an inferno that killed 134 people in what remains the worst combat-related U.S. naval disaster since World War II..... https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2018/04/02/john-mccain-vietnam-war-pow-release-45-years-ago-started-path-politics-arizona-senator/440247002/