John McCain's Ex-Wife

Disfigured In An Accident Then Divorced By Returning P.O.W. McCain

June 9. 2009

Carol McCain (John's ex-wife)

Yesterday, the Daily Mail in London did a very unflattering piece on John McCain and his treatment of his ex-wife, Carol, who the paper says he abandoned after she became physically disabled and disfigured in an accident.

Carol and returning P.O.W. John McCain in 1973

I'd alluded to scandals in Cindy McCain's past in my previous article The Candidates' Wives. Well, this was one of them. She was said to have helped him get a quick, but controversial divorce from his wife.

John McCain and his current wife Cindy

This story cannot be called a rumor, as there is too much evidence to support it (marriage, divorce, tax and medical records). However, Mr. McCain can give his position on what happened, as this subject will no doubt come up again.

The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind

Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain...

She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.

She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries...

She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time, without going into details. Some friends blame his dissatisfaction with Carol, but others give some credence to her theory of a mid-life crisis...

‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.’

In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage.

Carol and her children were devastated. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide.