Cindy Hensley McCain

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Cindy Hensley McCain

Born May 20, 1954 (1954-05-20) (age 54)
Phoenix, Arizona
Nationality American
Alma mater University of Southern California
Occupation Philanthropist and Businessperson
Known for Wife of U.S. Senator and presidential candidate John McCain
Political party Republican
Spouse John McCain (1980-present)

Cindy Lou Hensley McCain (born Cindy Lou Hensley on May 20, 1954[1]) is the wife of United States Senator and 2000 and 2008 presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona. She is chair of Hensley & Co.,[2][3] one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the nation.[2] She also founded and ran a non-profit organization from 1988 to 1995 that organized trips by medical personnel to disaster-struck or war-torn third-world areas. She continues to be an active philanthropist and serves on the boards of several charitable organizations.

Contents

Early life and education

Cindy Lou Hensley was born in Phoenix, Arizona,[4] to James Hensley, who founded Hensley & Co. in 1955,[3] and Marguerite "Smitty" Hensley.[5][4] She grew up as an only child[6] in affluent circumstances[7], and was a rodeo queen in 1968.[8] She went to Central High School[6] in Phoenix, where she graduated in 1972.[9]

Hensley received a Bachelor of Arts in education and a Master of Arts in special education, both from the University of Southern California.[1][10] At USC, she was a cheerleader[11] and a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.[12] There she participated in a movement therapy pilot program that laid the way for a standard treatment for children with severe disabilities;[10] she published the work Movement Therapy: A Possible Approach in 1978.[13] Declining a role in the family business,[14] she then began a special education teaching career working with children with disabilities at Agua Fria High School in Avondale, Arizona.[10][4]

Marriage and family

Hensley met John McCain in April 1979 at a military reception in Hawaii.[15] He was the U.S. Navy liaison officer to the United States Senate, almost eighteen years her senior.[16] He was married to his wife Carol, and had previously had extramarital affairs in the mid-1970s.[17] Carol and John McCain had separated briefly once, but had since come back together.[15] McCain and Hensley quickly began a relationship.[16] Carol and John McCain finally separated in late 1979,[15][18] Carol accepted a divorce in February of 1980,[15] effective in April 1980, and then John and Cindy were married on May 17, 1980 in Phoenix. They made a prenuptial agreement that kept most of her family's assets under her name;[19] they have since kept their finances apart and file separate income tax returns.[19]

Her father's business and political contacts helped gain her husband a foothold into Arizona politics;[15] she campaigned with her husband door-to-door during his successful first bid for U.S. Congress in 1982,[8] with her wealth from an expired trust from her parents providing significant loans to the campaign[20][21][22] and helping it survive a period of early debt.[23] Once he was elected, the couple moved to Alexandria, Virginia.[24] She spent two months in late 1983 writing handwritten notes on over 4,000 Christmas cards to be sent to constituents and others, and grew homesick for Arizona.[24]

After several miscarriages,[16] Cindy Hensley McCain gave birth to her first three children: Meghan (born 1984), John Sidney IV (known as "Jack") (born 1986), and James (known as "Jimmy") (born 1988).[25] By early 1984, she had moved back to Arizona;[24] her parents lived across the street and helped her raise the children while her husband was frequently in Washington.[16]

American Voluntary Medical Team and adoption

In 1988, inspired by a vacation visit to substandard medical facilities on Truk Lagoon,[11] Cindy McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT).[1] It was a non-profit organization that organized trips for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel to provide MASH-like emergency medical care to disaster-struck or war-torn third-world areas such as Micronesia, Vietnam (before relations were normalized between them and the U.S.[11]), Kuwait (arriving five days after the conclusion of the Gulf War[11]), Iraq, Nicaragua, India, Bangladesh and El Salvador.[7][26][27][28][29] She led 55 of these missions over the next seven years,[10] with each being of at least two weeks' duration.[29] AVMT also supplied treatment to poor sick children around the world.[30]

While at Mother Teresa's orphanage in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1991 — as part of AVMT's assistance team following the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone[27] — she met two infant girls she decided needed to be brought to the United States for medical treatment.[16] She decided to adopt one of the girls (her husband readily agreeing), later named Bridget[7] (who became the McCains' fourth child together), and helped coordinate the adoption of the other little girl, named Mickey, for Wes Gullett, a family friend.[7] In 1993, Cindy McCain and the AVMT were honored with an award from Food for the Hungry.[7]

Prescription drug addiction, theft, and recovery

Cindy McCain, ship's sponsor, prepares to christen USS John S. McCain at Bath Iron Works in Maine. September 1992.
Cindy McCain, ship's sponsor, prepares to christen USS John S. McCain at Bath Iron Works in Maine. September 1992.

In 1989, Cindy McCain became addicted to opioid painkillers such as Percocet and Vicodin,[31] which she initially took to alleviate pain following two spinal surgeries for ruptured discs[32][33] and to ease emotional stress during the Keating Five scandal,[31] which involved her as a bookkeeper who had difficulty finding receipts.[14] The addiction progressed to where she resorted to stealing drugs from her own AVMT.[32] During 1992, Tom Gosinski, the director of government and international affairs for AVMT, discovered her drug theft.[34] Subsequently in 1992, her parents staged an intervention to force her to get help;[14] she told her husband about her problem, attended a drug treatment facility, began outpatient sessions, and ended her three years of active addiction.[31] A hysterectomy in 1993 resolved her back pain.[31][33]

In January 1993, McCain terminated Gosinski's employment on grounds of budgetary reasons.[34] In spring 1993, Gosinski tipped off the Drug Enforcement Administration to investigate McCain's drug theft,[34] and a federal investigation ensued. McCain's defense team, led by Washington lawyer John Dowd,[34] secured an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's office that limited her punishment to financial restitution and enrollment in a diversion program, [7][34] without any public disclosure.

Meanwhile, in early 1994 Gosinski filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against McCain, which he told her he would settle for $250,000.[34] In April 1994, Dowd requested that Maricopa County officials investigate Gosinski for extortion.[34] The Phoenix New Times was about to publish a negatively-cast article about the whole affair.[34][31] Cindy McCain pre-empted this[31] by publicly revealing her past addiction, stating she hoped it would give fellow drug addicts courage in their struggles: "Although my conduct did not result in compromising any missions of AVMT, my actions were wrong, and I regret them."[7] A flurry of press attention followed, including charges by Gosinski that she had asked him to lie concerning her drug use when the McCains were applying to adopt their baby from Bangladesh[31] and statements by past AVMT employees that Gosinski had once threatened to blackmail her. The Arizona Republic published an editorial cartoon ridiculing the motivations for her AVMT work[35] and an award dinner in her honor was canceled citing poor ticket sales.[7] In the end, both Gosinski's lawsuit and the extortion investigation against him were dropped.[31]

AVMT concluded its activities in 1995.[26] That year, McCain founded a new organization, the Hensley Family Foundation, which donates monies towards children's programs in Arizona and nationally,[7] and she was largely a stay-at-home mom during the balance of the 1990s.[14] She also held positions as vice president, director, and vice chair of Hensley & Co.[23][22]

Role in 2000 presidential campaign

Although wary of the media,[7] McCain was active in her husband's eventually unsuccessful campaign for President of the United States in 2000.[14] She mostly provided good cheer, without discussing her opinions about national policy. She impressed Republican voters with her looks and elegance at coffee shops and other small campaign settings, where she frequently referred to her children, carpooling, and charity work.[8]

She was upset by the notorious smear tactics against her husband in the South Carolina primary that year, which included allegations involving her adopted daughter Bridget that she found "despicable".[14] Cindy McCain eventually forgave those responsible.[8] She was chosen as the chair of the Arizona delegation to the 2000 Republican National Convention.[10]

Between presidential campaigns

John and Cindy McCain at a Naval Sea Cadet Corps graduation at Fort Dix in New Jersey. July 2001.
John and Cindy McCain at a Naval Sea Cadet Corps graduation at Fort Dix in New Jersey. July 2001.

In 2000, she became chair of the now $300-million-a-year Hensley & Co.[36] following her father's death.[33] There her role took the form of frequent consultations with the company CEO on major initiatives such as new products, new plants, or employee welfare, rather than of an active physical presence.[37][38] By 2007, she had an annual income of over $400,000 from Hensley & Co. and an estimated net worth of $100 million.[19] With her children, she owns a minority stake in the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team.[23]

She became actively involved with Operation Smile in 2001,[39] taking parts in trips with it to Morocco, Vietnam, and India.[39] She was honored by the organization in 2005,[39] and sits on its board of directors.[26] She joined the board of directors of CARE in 2005.[26] She is on the board of the HALO Trust,[26] and has visited operations to remove landmines in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and Angola.[10] She makes financial contributions to these organizations via her family trust,[11] and views her role on in them as watching them in the field and to ensure they are frugal and their money is being spent effectively.[38]

John and Cindy McCain at the 21st annual Coronado Salute to the Military Ball in Coronado, California. March 2006.
John and Cindy McCain at the 21st annual Coronado Salute to the Military Ball in Coronado, California. March 2006.

Due to high blood pressure, McCain suffered a near-fatal stroke in April 2004.[40][33] After several months of physical therapy to overcome her leg and arm limitations, she made a mostly full recovery, although she still suffers from some short-term memory loss and difficulties in writing.[33] She owns a home in Coronado, California, next to the Hotel del Coronado;[38] her family had vacationed in Coronado growing up, and she now went there for recuperation and family get-togethers.[38] She also owns other residential and commercial real estate in both California and Arizona.[23]

Role in 2008 presidential campaign

She has been active and visible in her husband's presidential campaign during 2007 and 2008.[8] She made statements critical of the Bush administration for not deploying enough troops during the Iraq War,[8] and was an internal critic within the McCain campaign of its profligate spending during the first part of 2007.[11] During the campaign, she returned to Arizona frequently to attend to domestic duties[38] and interrupted campaigning for her overseas charitable work.[11] She has stated that the American public wants a First Lady of the United States who will tend toward a traditional role in that position.[41] She would not attend Cabinet meetings,[38] but would continue her involvement in overseas non-profit organizations and would urge Americans to do the same globally or locally.[38]

In February 2008, McCain made news by being critical of Michelle Obama, the wife of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama, who had said, "And let me tell you something: For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country." McCain replied: "I am proud of my country. I don't know about you — if you heard those words earlier — I am very proud of my country."[42] Also in February 2008, she publicly appeared aside her husband during a press conference in response to a newspaper report regarding his connection to a lobbyist.[43] In April 2008, some recipes on the McCain campaign website attributed to Cindy McCain turned out to be copied from the Food Network;[44][45] the campaign attributed the problem to an error by an intern.[44] Earlier in the year, Cindy McCain submitted as her own a Food Network recipe for passion fruit mousse to an article published in The New York Sun.[44] In May 2008, she declined to make her separate income tax return public, saying it was a privacy issue and that she would not do so even if she became First Lady.[46] Later the same month, she released the first two pages of her 2006 return, which showed $6 million in income for that year (including nearly $570,000 in itemized deductions and more than $1.7 million paid in federal income taxes).[47]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c "Bio of Cindy Hensley McCain", Chicago Tribune, 2008-04-15. Retrieved on 2008-04-22. 
  2. ^ a b "About Us: Our People", Hensley & Company website, URL last accessed November 14, 2006.
  3. ^ a b Hensley & Company Company Profile. Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved on 2008-01-11.
  4. ^ a b c Bob Dart. "As candidate's wife, Cindy McCain finds herself in spotlight", Austin American-Statesman, 2008-03-09. Retrieved on 2008-03-26. 
  5. ^ "Sen. John McCain's mother-in-law dies", The Washington Post, October 22, 2006 (URL last accessed November 14, 2006).
  6. ^ a b Bobbie Kyle. "10 Things You Didn't Know About Cindy McCain", USA Today, 2008-01-11. Retrieved on 2008-01-11. 
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tapper, Jake, "I'm not Hillary", Salon.com, July 2, 1999 (URL last accessed April 4, 2007).
  8. ^ a b c d e f Jennifer Steinhauer. "Mrs. McCain Is Speaking Up in a Steely Tone", The New York Times, 2007-06-29. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  9. ^ Association announces honorary co-chairs. Central High Alumni' Echoes (October-November 2003). Retrieved on 2008-01-11.
  10. ^ a b c d e f About Cindy McCain. John McCain 2008. Retrieved on 2008-01-11.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Jill Zuckman. "The contrasts of Cindy McCain", Chicago Tribune, 2008-04-15. Retrieved on 2008-04-23. 
  12. ^ "Famous Thetas", Kappa Alpha Theta, Omicron Chapter, University of Southern California. Retrieved 2008-02-08.
  13. ^ Hensley, Cindy Lou (1978). Movement Therapy: A Possible Approach. University of Southern California. Order number 2576H. 
  14. ^ a b c d e f Melinda Henneberger. "Unexpectedly, Cindy McCain Basks in a New Political Role", The New York Times, 2000-03-02. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  15. ^ a b c d e Nicholas Kristof. "P.O.W. to Power Broker, A Chapter Most Telling", The New York Times, February 27, 2000. Retrieved on 2007-04-22. 
  16. ^ a b c d e Nancy Collins. "Cindy McCain: Myth vs. Reality", Harpers Bazaar, July 2007. Retrieved on 2008-01-11. 
  17. ^ Timberg, Robert (1999). John McCain: An American Odyssey. Touchstone Books. ISBN 0-684-86794-X.  pp. 123–124.
  18. ^ Romano, Lois. “Out of the Fire, Politics Calls; Ex-POW Turns Washington Insider”, Washington Post (2000-03-02). Retrieved 2008-06-10.
  19. ^ a b c "McCain Releases His Tax Returns", Associated Press for CBS News, 2008-04-18. Retrieved on 2008-04-24. 
  20. ^ Dan Nowicki, Bill Muller. "John McCain Report: Arizona, the early years", The Arizona Republic, 2007-03-01. Retrieved on 2007-11-21. 
  21. ^ Bill Muller, “Chapter IV: Arizona, the early years”, The Arizona Republic (1999-06-05), via Archive.org: “In 1982....the McCains lent $169,000 of their own money to the campaign....In the end, including the personal loans, McCain would raise more than $550,000 to win the seat.”
  22. ^ a b Frantz, Douglas, "A Beer Baron and a Powerful Publisher Put McCain on a Political Path", The New York Times, pp. A14, February 21, 2000, URL retrieved November 29, 2006. "Though he had little money of his own because he had been a career naval officer, his wife's fortune allowed him to lend $167,000 to the campaign, which was permissible under campaign laws then."
  23. ^ a b c d Sharon Theimer. "Beer heiress could be next first lady", Associated Press for MSNBC.com, 2008-04-03. Retrieved on 2008-04-29. 
  24. ^ a b c Romano, Lois. "Out of the Fire, Politics Calls; Ex-POW Turns Washington Insider", The Washington Post, 2000-03-02. 
  25. ^ John McCain. The New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-03-28.
  26. ^ a b c d e "CARE Board Member Biography: Cindy Hensley McCain", CARE website, URL last accessed November 14, 2006.
  27. ^ a b McCain, Cindy Hensley; Gina Bridgeman (1998). "One Life at a Time", in Canfield, Hansen, Hawthorne, Shimoff: A Second Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul: 101 More Stories. Health Communications, Inc.. ISBN 1558746218. 
  28. ^ Alexander, Paul (2002). Man of the People: The Life of John McCain. John Wiley & Sons, p. 163. ISBN 0-471-22829-X. 
  29. ^ a b Timberg, An American Odyssey, pp. 180–181.
  30. ^ Feinberg, Barbara Silberdick (2000). John McCain: Serving His Country. Millbrook Press. ISBN 0761319743.  p. 35.
  31. ^ a b c d e f g h Dan Nowicki, Bill Muller. "John McCain Report: Overcoming scandal, moving on", The Arizona Republic, 2007-03-01. Retrieved on 2007-11-23. 
  32. ^ a b Bill Delaney. "Cindy McCain stays on an even keel", CNN.com, 1999-11-22. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  33. ^ a b c d e Paul Alexander. "Cindy McCain at Full Throttle", More, September 2007. Retrieved on 2008-01-30. 
  34. ^ a b c d e f g h Silverman, Amy, "How Cindy McCain was outed for drug addiction", Salon.com, October 18, 1999 (URL last accessed September 15, 2007).
  35. ^ Timberg, An American Odyssey, p. 187.
  36. ^ Jennifer Rubin. "Cindy McCain's Straight Talk", ABC News, 2007-05-25. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  37. ^ Dawn Gilbertson. "McCain, his wealth tied to wife's family beer business", The Arizona Republic, 2007-01-23. Retrieved on 2008-03-06. 
  38. ^ a b c d e f g Tom Blair. "Cindy McCain", San Diego Magazine, August 2007. Retrieved on 2008-03-08. 
  39. ^ a b c Operation Smile (2005-09-12). "Operation Smile to Honor Cindy McCain, ...". Press release. Retrieved on 2008-01-12.
  40. ^ Villa, Judi, "Cindy McCain goes home; full recovery is expected", The Arizona Republic, April 17, 2004.
  41. ^ Richard Ruelas. "Cindy McCain: Caring, campaigning and coping", The Arizona Republic, 2007-12-13. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  42. ^ "Cindy McCain takes Michelle Obama to task", Newsday, February 19, 2008.
  43. ^ Libby Quaid. "Cindy McCain, Like Others, Stands by Man", Associated Press, 2008-02-21. Retrieved on 2008-02-21. 
  44. ^ a b c "McCain site recipes really Food Network's", United Press International, 2008-04-15. Retrieved on 2008-04-15. 
  45. ^ Suzanne Goldenberg. "Recipes removed from McCain campaign website", The Guardian, 2008-04-16. Retrieved on 2008-05-01.  The recipes were for ahi tuna with Napa cabbage salad, crab scampi with whole wheat pasta, pasta with turkey sausage, and passion fruit mousse.
  46. ^ "Cindy McCain: I'll never release my tax returns", Associated Press for USA Today, 2008-05-08. Retrieved on 2008-05-08. 
  47. ^ Kuhnhenn, Jim. "Cindy McCain had $6 million income in 2006", Associated Press, 2008-05-23. Retrieved on 2008-05-24. 

External links


v • d • e
John McCain
Political activities
Elections
Life
Books authored
Family
Cindy Hensley McCain (wife) · Carol McCain (first wife) · Meghan McCain (daughter) · John S. McCain, Jr. (father) · Roberta McCain (mother) · Joe McCain (brother) · John S. McCain, Sr. (grandfather)
Persondata
NAME McCain, Cindy Hensley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Philanthropist and Businessperson
DATE OF BIRTH 1954-5-20
PLACE OF BIRTH Phoenix, Arizona
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Languages