Her Husband Is Willing to Take the Weight of America on His Shoulders
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Feature THE CANDIDATE’S TROUBLE AND STRIFE Her husband is willing to take the weight of America on his shoulders. But is Cindy McCain secretly hoping he loses his bid for the White House? Report by Christine Toomey. Photographs: Christopher Morris Support work: Cindy McCain helps her husband, Senator John McCain, with his coat on board their private campaign plane last April xx stm30040.indd 2-3 20/3/08 12:59:47 40 The Sunday Times Magazine March 30, 2008 March 30, 2008 The Sunday Times Magazine 41 hoenix, Arizona. On the stretch of of pampered privilege, all is not necessarily April 2007 (clockwise pearly white smile, we need to return to a who still remember Cindy Lou as a girl. company. “Selling beer in the desert was a gold street where Cindy McCain grew what it seems. Family dramas are laundered from above): with Senator different era, to a time when America was not Behind 7110 North Central Avenue, where mine. They did pretty well for themselves,” up and, in the same house, raised in private, and rarely stain the manicured Lindsey Graham aboard tarnished in the eyes of the world, to the star- she grew up, one elderly couple, John and Sally Auther recalls. It’s an understatement. Hensley & her own family with the lives of neighbours – unless, that is, a husband the McCain campaign spangled days of the American dream, when JFK Auther, have lived in the same house for 50 years. Company, the third largest wholesaler of Republican presidential candidate decides to make a run for the White House. plane; smiling as her was in the White House; a time when Cindy They still recall Cindy Lou. “Her folks were Anheuser-Busch beer in the US, is now a Senator John McCain, tall, toned Then the world intrudes, poking its nose husband says he’ll stand McCain was just a clever, beautiful girl known in somewhat protective of her. She was not a real $300m-a-year business (which Cindy McCain women in tight-fi tting shorts jog into the nooks and crannies of respectability to be nominated as the the neighbourhood as Cindy Lou. outgoing type. She didn’t mix a lot with other took over when her father died in 2000). Even along the sidewalk in the sunshine. in search of the sleepless nights endured in Republican candidate; ) ) ) ) ) kids in the neighbourhood when she was young; when she was growing up it was a thriving Across the lawns of the spacious pursuit of such ambition. en route to Iowa In a society as transient as the United States, neither did her own children,” says Sally Auther. business. The Hensleys kept clydesdale horses, homes that trail away on either Friends and neighbours close ranks around where the average family stays only fi ve years in One point on which everyone agrees is that the large Budweiser mascot breed. Jim Hensley side, gardeners, mostly Mexicans, their own, throwing up stone walls to intrusive one home before moving on, the North Central Cindy Lou was the apple of her father’s eye. Born liked to ride and, when his daughter was old stoop low, snipping hedges and questions, questions that won’t go away about Avenue area is unusual. For a street so close to in 1954, she was the only child of Jim Hensley enough, he took her on long treks through tending swimming pools. Cindy McCain and her life at 7110 North HAVING HAD A STRONG the bustling offi ce blocks of downtown Phoenix, and his wife, Marguerite, known as “Smitty”. Arizona to California and Mexico. The social lives of wives and mothers here Central Avenue. They present an impenetrable one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, it While Smitty was strict and reserved, Jim At 14, Cindy Lou was crowned the local Prevolve around husbands, children, pot-luck and united front to protect the woman who may has a strangely suburban feel. Originally an doted on his daughter and gave her the best of rodeo queen. At 15, she transferred to Central dinners and block parties. One has set up be America’s next fi rst lady. BOND WITH HER FATHER, orange grove where developers built ranch-style the privileged lifestyle the couple had earned. High School in Phoenix – its motto was an e-mail alert system in the event of rare winter To fl ank it, and to understand the long and homes so “upper-income residents” could keep Neither came from wealthy backgrounds. They “America’s high school”. The retired principal, frosts in this desert-city suburb, so that sometimes deeply troubled road that Cindy CINDY ADMITS SHE horses, it still has a gravel bridle path running the met in St Louis after the second world war Cindy Lou’s former teacher David Silcox, neighbours can quickly pull protective covers McCain has travelled to stand by her husband, length of the street. Families who live here tend and moved to Phoenix, borrowing $12,500 explains. “It represented all that was good about a 42 over treasured fl owers. But against this backdrop immaculately dressed and accessorised with a WANTED AN OLDER MAN MORRIS/VII CHRISTOPHER PHOTOGRAPHS: not to move on quickly. So there are some here to buy the licence for a beer-distribution America: opportunity for all, contributing 43 stm30042.indd 4-5 20/3/08 10:32:49 42 The Sunday Times Magazine March 30, 2008 March 30, 2008 The Sunday Times Magazine 43 to the common good, giving something back if she stands smiling by her man on the campaign New Hampshire, January was a prisoner of war in Hanoi. John McCain, a you’ve been given gifts by birth. All that might trail, sometimes suggests she is not happy at the 2008 (clockwise from naval pilot, was shot down on a bombing mission sound a bit hokey, apple pie and hot dogs,” he idea of moving permanently into the limelight. above): John McCain ‘SHE HAD AN INSIDIOUS over North Vietnam in 1967 and tortured so says. “But it’s what we believed, and I still do.” In high school, Silcox remembers Cindy Lou with family and friends badly during the next 51/2 years in which he was By the time Cindy Lou arrived at Central as “a motivated, diligent student, very involved in after his presidential ADDICTION TO DRUGS held captive that he attempted suicide before High in 1969, however, storm clouds had already community-service activities like cleaning up primary election party in being released after the 1973 Paris peace accords. darkened the American dream. JFK had been city parks, helping the homeless and the elderly” Nashua; Cindy aboard the By then, Cindy Lou had gone to study assassinated; his brother Bobby too. The civil- – an altruistic streak that would thread through McCain campaign bus, THAT SAPPED THE education at the University of Southern rights movement had been devastated by the her life. While contemporaries recall “a pompom the Straight Talk Express, California (USC), which one American reporter murder of Martin Luther King Jr, and Richard line girl”, a cheerleader, old school newspapers near Concord; husband BEAUTY FROM HER LIFE’ says McCain once quipped stood for “University Nixon was in the White House, sinking into the and yearbooks make no mention of this. and wife in conversation for Spoiled Children”. But the path his wife quagmire of the Vietnam war. But the only “Perhaps she was just a quiet kind of kid,” says as the bus reaches Salem mother took her to Los Angeles to get hers. chose after graduating with a master’s degree was mention of that faraway confl ict in the school Randi Turk, Central High’s dynamic English By the time she left Central High in 1972, not that of a brat. Returning to Phoenix, yearbook of her freshman year is a reference to a teacher, as together we leaf through the yearbook however, Vietnam had intruded. The yearbook she followed the Central High ethos of “giving “candy apple and chewing gum sale” held to raise of her senior year. There she is, looking prim in a is testimony to the generational turmoil the war something back”, and went to work as a money for children in South Vietnam. The book tailored trouser suit. While other students, provoked. It pictures a visiting congressman special-needs teacher in one of the poorer challenges students to follow the American poet shown fooling around in hippie hairbands and vowing that no amnesty would be granted to neighbourhoods of the city. Carl Sandburg’s plea “to gain recognition… have fl oral smocks, were voted “most congenial”, draft-dodgers, while a teacher is quoted as saying: “All of a sudden this beautiful blondie shows our faces noticed… [even though] such a position “most respected” and “most talkative”, Cindy “We’ve become the people that burn children.” up on campus and takes us all by surprise,” recalls may not at all times be comfortable… Faces speak Lou was voted “best dressed”. Contemporaries ) ) ) ) ) the former principal of Agua Fria high school in what words can never say”. These are poignant remember that while most girls bought their For the four years that Cindy Lou was at Central Avondale, 75-year-old “Okay” Fulton. “The kids 44 words now; Cindy McCain’s body language, as high-school prom dresses in the local store, her High, the man who would become her husband adored her. She was highly dedicated. She a 45 stm30044.indd 6-7 20/3/08 10:33:29 March 30, 2008 The Sunday Times Magazine 45 taught teenagers with Down’s syndrome and other disabilities.