WASHINGTON -- A big influence in John McCain's life was his mother Roberta. She's 106 year old and lives in Washington, D.C.
Roberta McCain was determined life to the fullest. She's 106 now, but when she was 95, she campaigned for her son's presidential campaign.
In a C-Span interview the same year, it was clear, she's a strong woman. She met John S. McCain, Jr. when she was a 19-year-old college student.
"We eloped," in Tijuana, Mexico, because her mother did not like him. But, "it was a love affair."
Her husband became a Navy Admiral, like his father, and they moved constantly.
She took her children on educational trips all over the world, something Sen. McCain described in his memoir as his mother's "mobile classroom."
When he was shot down in Vietnam in 1967, Roberta told Cspan that she thought he was dead.
When she was told that he was a POW, "can you believe that's the best news that I've ever had in my life," she said.
It was an agonizing five and a half years while her son was was tortured, but she does not dwell the sad times.
Even in her 90's she was traveling the world with her beloved twin sister Rowena. One time in England, they said she was too old to rent a car.
"They wouldn't rent me a car, so I bought a Peugeot," said Roberta McCain.
But one look at the inside of her Washington home, brightly, and boldly decorated, and you can see the impact she had on her children's lives.
"She was voluble, and funny and acerbic and assertive. And so we got our personalities from her," said John McCain's younger brother Joe.
The family moved around so much, they were often plunked into a new school in the middle of the year.
To fit in and survive, Joe said you had to be star athletes, or gorgeous, and they were neither. So, they used their gift of gab and personality derived from their mother.
Being smart and funny went a long way, said Joe McCain.
Since her stroke, Roberta McCain's speech is limited. However, she does know that Johnny, as she called him, has died.
John McCain wrote in his memoir that he "became his mother's son" often by emulating and exaggerating her characteristics.
He wrote, "She taught me to find so much pleasure in life that misfortune could not rob me of the joy of living."
What is Roberta McCain's secret to such a long life?
"Be grateful for what you've got and forget what you don't have. And I am so grateful for the life that we had. I can't have a regret. I have nothing but gratitude for what God's given me," she said.
