John McCain won't be buried with his father, grandfather at Arlington National Cemetery

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez | The Arizona Republic

Show Caption Hide Caption Sen. John McCain on his legacy Sen. John McCain discusses his most enduring contribution to the Senate during an interview with The Arizona Republic on Aug. 3, 2017. Thomas Hawthorne/azcentral.com

PHOENIX — As he continues to battle a deadly form of brain cancer, Sen. John McCain also is pondering his final resting place, where family, friends and strangers will one day pay their respects to the six-term senator from Arizona and 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

A prisoner-of-war and the grandson and son of four-star admirals in the U.S. Navy, McCain will not be buried in the land of his forefathers. They are laid to rest at ‎Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Instead, he will be buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Maryland, near his old Navy pal, Charles "Chuck" Larson, McCain writes in his new memoir, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations.

A Naval Academy spokeswoman said this week that McCain has a dedicated plot at the cemetery. It is "very close" to Larson's resting place, which McCain describes as "a beautiful spot" that is "near where our paths first crossed."

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"I want to smell the rose-scented breeze and feel the sun on my shoulders," McCain wrote in an emotional passage about how he hopes to spend his final days at his Arizona retreat near Sedona. "I want to watch the hawks hunt from the sycamore, and then take my leave bound for a place near my old friend Chuck Larson, in the cemetery on the Severn (River), back where it began."

Return to his roots

The return to his old stomping grounds, where McCain was one of the most popular and legendary midshipmen in his class, ties up a loose end for the 81-year-old senator, whose book suggests he is coming to terms with his own mortality.

A return to the peninsula overlooking the Severn River will bring McCain back to his beginning. It will be a homecoming, of sorts, to the Naval Academy Class of 1958.

McCain and Larson were best friends back then.

The future senator chafed under the strict rules of the school, drawing demerits, but just as many friends who gravitated to his quick wit and adventurous ways. Streaks of what would later be dubbed his "maverick" persona emerged.

Larson, on the other hand, was a high-achieving naval student and student-body president. He grew up in Nebraska and rose from an aviator, flying missions in Vietnam, to naval aide to former president Richard Nixon. He twice served as the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy.

'The Odd Couple'

"They were known as the Odd Couple: McCain short, scrappy, the consummate screwup, Larson the model midshipman, tall, handsome, smooth, bright," McCain biographer Robert Timberg wrote in John McCain: An American Odyssey.

"They shared a sense of the absurd and an eye for the ladies," Timberg wrote. "Larson, though was cautious. Of course, he had more to be cautious about. McCain didn't know what the word meant. ... He lived on the edge, which only added to his popularity. Even if you held back a bit, followed him so far and no further like Chuck Larson, it was still a hell of a ride."

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In the book, Timberg describes Larson as "the calm if mischievous eye of the hurricane." McCain, he wrote, "was the hurricane itself."

After the academy, the two men roomed and raised a ruckus together at flight schools, Timberg wrote.

At Corpus Christi, they reconfigured their set-up of adjoining rooms, he wrote. They moved their beds into one room and converted the other into a party room, sometimes littered with beer cans, cigarette butts and strewn evidence of late-night gambling.

One day, McCain's plane engine quit while he was practicing landings. He plummeted into the water and was knocked out. He gained consciousness as the plane sunk to the bottom of the bay, Timberg wrote.

McCain broke out of the plane, swam to the surface and was rushed for medical treatment. He hurt a bit, but didn't break anything, so he went home "popped some painkillers, and climbed into bed, hoping to recuperate in time to keep a brush with death from ruining an otherwise promising weekend," Timberg wrote.

Larson was shaving and was unaware of the crash. He was interrupted.

McCain's father, John S. "Jack" McCain Jr., had learned of the accident and sent an admiral friend to check on his son.

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"Strolling to the door, straight razor in hand, he heard a second knock, more insistent than the first," Timberg wrote of Larson. Annoyed, Larson marched to the door and swung it open, his razor in hand, nearly cutting his eyebrow as he scrambled to salute.

McCain was back on his feet for the weekend, Timberg wrote. But the next weekend, their quarters withstood a white-glove inspection.

Lifelong friends

The tale embodies the pair's lifelong friendship, which remained strong throughout their lives, until Larson's death in 2014 at age 77.

Larson burned an imprint in McCain's mind, the senator writes in The Restless Wave as he reflects on his life's memories and friendships from school, prison and the U.S. Senate.

"Other friends have left, too," McCain writes. "I'm tempted to say, before their time. But that isn't the truth. What God and good luck provide we must accept with gratitude. Our time is our time.

"It's up to us to make the most of it, make it amount to more than the sum of our days. God knows, my dear friend Chuck Larson, whom I had looked up to since we were boys, made the most of his."

At the time of Larson's death, McCain said in a statement he could think of "no finer example of honorable" and faithful service to the country than that of Larson's. Given his pedigree, he was accustomed to living in the shadows.

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"It has been a privilege and an honor, as a young man and an old one, to serve in Chuck's shadow," McCain wrote. "... Together we wish Admiral Chuck Larson, as we wish every good sailor, fair winds and following seas."

McCain's new book is available May 22.

Follow vonne Wingett Sanchez on Twitter: @yvonnewingett

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