He now belongs to the ages.
John McCain’s remains were carried by horse-drawn carriage to his final resting place today after a five-day procession that served as a final call to arms for a nation he warned could lose its civility and sense of shared purpose.
His flag-draped coffin was taken from the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel to the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery, where the late senator was laid to rest next to his Naval Academy classmate and lifelong friend, Admiral Chuck Larson.
Cindy McCain and the McCain children walked behind the caisson, in a procession led by sailors in their white uniforms.
The private ceremony in Annapolis, Maryland, was as carefully planned as the rest of McCain’s farewell tour, which began in Arizona after he died on August 25 from brain cancer and stretched to Washington.
Jack McCain, who was a steady presence in white Navy uniform by his mother’s side the past five days, paid tribute to his father in the private ceremony.
He wore his father’s Navy wings while doing so.
Sen. Lindsey Graham and General David Petraeus led the tributes.
The Navy Choir sang ‘Amazing Grace’ and McCain’s longtime aide and co-author Mark Salter also paid tribute to the life of the late senator.
Among the pallbearers were Frank Gamboa, his academy roommate; Defense Secretary Jim Mattis; Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman; his son-in-law Ben Domenech; and two men who were POWs with McCain in Vietnam, John Fer and Everett Alvarez Jr.
As the hearse carrying McCain passed through a gate and into the academy, there was a loud applause from the several hundred people lining the street outside on the hot and muggy summer day.
Many held their hands over their hearts and waved American flags and applauded loudly; some shouted “God bless you.”
McCain’s final resting place is with his longtime friend Admiral Chuck Larson, at the U.S. Naval Academy’s cemetery at Hospital Point, overlooking the Severn River near where their paths first crossed.
At the end of the interment, Air Force jets flew overhead in the missing man formation.
