troops, to lead sailors when the politics is so acrimonious at home? >> actually, what our military members look to is the support of the american people. and while they have their individual political views and look at is our support. they are terribly bright and focused and watch what goes on in terms of the partisanship. they don't express that. if they have supported boo i the american people as they have been in the iraq war and in afghanistan then they'll march off to do their jobs. extraordinary young men and women would do that. they like to see the kind of compromise that we are discussing. which is what they have supposed to do based on whoever the president is. we are seeing bill and clinton

there. we heard from whether i know toto he was at aretha franklin's memorial. >> we are honoring two heroes in different ways. it was moving actually. if you with r someoare someone from another planet, you have aretha on one side and john mccain on the other. it gives you the breath of both countries. >> only in america. not another country. >> absolutely. >> it was something else. halie jackson, you are watching

along with us as well. i find that john kelly nod, i think that was a touching nod by the mccain family for all the acrimony between the white house and senator mccain, it was clear. it may have just been a lone person. >> it was intentional and symbolic. john mccain is sending a message of everybody gathered here that his family brought together and the people will be speaking for him. i can't help but think what would john mccain have said. he said john is probably watching above looking at all those reporters without umbrellas, let's douse them.

>> it was affectionate. the next 90 minutes will be incredibly powerful. after we hear the navy hymn played by the navy band was kennedy's body carried up the steps of the capitol. you will hear from megan mccain. she's the most visible. they are walking in. >> the family is filing in right now. somebody shared a great story with us at the "meet the press" e-mail box. a young man who was enlisted and he was in training career. he gets this crazy phone call about a congressional thing and john mccain says you need to call your mother. the young mother written to mccain saying my son has not

call me enough while in service. he didn't care about your station in life. this is why so many reporters liked him. for young reporters, the first serious person to take seriously would be non mccajohn mccain. he was not a snob. >> he was always real. even people who did not like him would be the first to say about it. he understood the central role of a free press in society. i love what he said to you. i hate the press, i hate you especially, chuck, but we need you. he understood the press is the only protected category, the only business under the constitution. that's something that's vitally important. i do hope the next generation of political leaders feel strongly. you can see joe biden is one of them, you can see bill cohen

there. michael bloomberg is one and rick davis and phil graham and another former colleague of his from texas, gary hart, former democratic colleague from colorado. this is probably my favorite that they picked. a russian dissidance is fighting for freedom there and as many people say his final salute to vladimir putin. >> the other thing that john had that is worth observing is he experienced kindness when he suffered. when he came home, he was not in great shape. he returned that favor, almost all anonymously. it was quite common for him to visit political enemies when they were hostage. >> that's what i learn this

week. so many of these stories came out. >> it came from his own experience. he knew what it was like when people take care of him and giving something when he needed most. >> all right. >> as you can see here the service is officially beginning. we'll take this much of it in with you. and try not to interrupt it too much at all.

>> i am resurrection, i am life says the lord. who ever has faith in me shall have life even though he died and everyone who has light and has committed himself to me in faith, shall not die forever.

as for me, i know that my redeemer lives and that at the last he'll stand upon the earth after my awaken, he'll raise me up and in my body, i shall see god. i myself shall see and behold him who is my zprend nfriend an stranger. for none of us has life in himself and none becomes his own master when he dies. for if we have life, we are alive in the lord and if we die, we die in the lord.

so whether we live or die, we are the lord's possession. happy from now on are those who die in the lord so it says the spirit for they rest from their

labors.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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note no ♪ ♪ ♪ >> please be seated.

>> good morning, my name is randy hollerith. on behalf of the dioceses of washington and all of us who serves our lord at this cathedral, welcome to this house of prayer for all people. it is an honor to host this service for senator mccain, to senator mccain's wife cindy and his mother roberta and the entire mccain family. our hearts are with you and with all those across the country and around the world who grieves the loss of this great american patriot and statesman. today we give john sidney mccain the iii back to the grace of

love who gave him to us. beyond this life, there is indeed more life. god never lets us goe . we gather to give thanks for all the goodness and courage that have passed from john mccain's life into the lives of others and left the world a richer and bet better place. for goodh humor and gracious an affection and kindly generosity. weakness endured without defeat. may the lord bless him and keep him this day and always. thank you.

>> the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. i hate very much to leave it. when earnest hemmingway robert

jordan, life wounded and waiting for his last fights, these are among his final thought. my father had every reason to think the world was an awful place. my father had every reason to think the world was not fighting for. my father had every reason to think the world was worth leaving. he did not think any of those things. like the hero of his favorite book, john mccain, took the opposite world. you have to have a lot of luck to have had such a good life. i am here before you today saying the words i have never wanted to say. giving this speech, i never wanted to give. feeling the loss i have never wanted to feel, my father is gone. john mccain the 3rd was many things, he was a sailor and an

aviator, he was a warrior, he was a prisoner, he was a hero, he was a congressman, he was a senator, he was a nominee for the president of the united states. these are the all the titles. they are not the greatest of the title nor the most important of his roles. he was a great man. we gather here to mourn the american greatness. the real thing, not cheap rhetoric of men who never came near the sacrifice he gave so willingly. he was a great fire who burnt right. in the past few days my family and i have heard so many of those americans who stood in the warmth and light of his fire and found it illuminating and what's best about them.

we are grateful to them because they are grateful to him. if you have resented that fire, for the truth it revealed about their character but my father never cared what they thought. even that small numbers still have the opportunity as long as they draw breath to live up the example of john mccain. my father was a great man. he was a great warrior. he was a great american. i admire him for all of these things but i love him because he was a great father. my father knew what it was like to grow up in the shadow of greatness. he did just as his father have done before him. he was a son of a great admiral who was also a son of a great admiral. when it came time for john the 3rd to become the man, he had no choice, he walked in the exact

same path. he had to become a sailor. he had to go to war. he had to have his shot of becoming a great admiral as they also have done. the past of his father and grandfather led my father to the hanoi hilton. this is the public legend that's john mccain. this is all the biography and campaign literature that showed his character, his patriotism and endurance of the worst possible circumstances. this is where we learn who john mccain was. all of that is very true except for the last part. today i want to share with you who john mccain really was. he was not in the hanoi hilton. it was not in a cockpit of a fast lethal fighter jet. it was not on the high seas or the campaign trail. john mccain was in all of these

places but the best of him was some where else. the best of john mccain, the greatest of his hittitles and t most important of his roles was as a father. imagine a warrior, the night of the sky gently carrying his little girl to bed and imagine the dashing aviator who took his aircraft hurdling off pitching death in the south china seas, kissing the hurt when i fell and skin my knee. imagine the statesman who counseled presidents and the powerful and singing with his little girl at old creek during the rainstorm. imagine the senator fears conscious of the nation's best self taking his 14-year-old daughter out of school because he believed that i would learn more about america at the town hall he held across the country. imagine an elderly governme

government -- with his eyes shining with happiness as he gave his blessing for his daughter's marriage. you all have to imagine that, i don't to because i lived it all. i know who he was. i know what defined him. i got to see it every single day of my blessed life. he was not defined by the prison or the navy or the senate or the republican party or by any single one of the deed, of his extraordinary life. john mccain is defined by love. several of you out there accused or crossed words with you or found yourself on the receiving end of his famous temper, doing your best to stay stoned face. don't. you know full well that if john mccain were in your shoes today,

he would leave some seawaalty w he learned in the navy. he would keep grinning. she was the only one who could do that. on their first date when he still did not know what kind of woman she was, he recited a poem to her. there are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moild for gold. he had learned it in hanoi. a prisoner in the next cell rapped it out in code over and over again during the long years of captivity. my father figure that cindy would sit through that and appreciate the dark humor. she might sit through a lifetime with him as well and she did.

john mccain was defined by love. this love of my father from my mother was the most fierce and lasting of them all, mom. let me tell you what love meant to john mccain and me. his love was the love of a father who mentors as much as he comforts. he was endlessly present for us and no, we did not always understand it, he was always teaching. he didn't expect us to be like him. his ambition for us was to be better than him. armed with his wisdom and informed by his experiences long before we were old enough to assemble our own. as a girl, i did not appreciate what i mostly appreciate now. how he suffered and how he bore it with his stoic silence that was once the mark of the

american man. i came to appreciate it first when he demanded of me. i was a small girl thrown from a horse and crying from a busted collarbone. my dad picked me up and took me to the doctor and got me fixed up and he took me back home and made me get back on the same horse. i was furious at him as a child but how i love him for it now. my father knew pain and suffering with an intimacy that most of us are blessed and never having to endure. he was shot down, he was crippled, he was beaten and starved and tortured and h humilia humiliated. that main never left him. yet, he survived. yet, he endured. yet, he triumphed. there was this man who had been through all that with a little girl who did not want to get

back on her horse. he could have sat me down and told me all of that and made me feel small because my clayton acomplaint was nothing next to his misery. meghan he says, his quiet voice that spoke with authority, get back on the horse. because i was a little girl, i resented it. now that i am a woman, i look back at that time and see the expression on his face when i climb backup and rode again. i see the pride and love in his eyes as he said, nothing is going to break you. the rest of my life when ever i fall down, i get backup and when ever i am hurt, i drive on. when i brought low, i rise.

it is not because i am strong or resilient. it is simply because my father, john mccain, was. when my father got sick, i asked him what he wanted me to do with this eulogy, he said, show them how tough you are. that's what love meant to john mccain. love for my father also meant caring for the nation and trusted him. my father the true son of his father and his grandfather was born into an enduring sense of the heart one character of american's greatness and was convinced the need to defend it with faith. john mccain was born in the out post of american power. he understood america as a secret trust. he understood our public

demands, responsibilities even before it defends its rights. he knew navigating the line between good and evil was often difficult but always symbol. he grasped that our purpose and meaning was routed in a missionary responsibilities stretching back centuries. just as the first american looking upon a new world of grand experience and freedom. the america of john mccain is the america of the revolution. fighter with no stomach for the summer soldier and the sunshine patriots, making the world a new with the bell of liberty. the america of john mccain is the america of abraham lincoln, fulfilling the promise of the declaration of independence that all men are created equal and suffering greatly to see it through. the america of john mccain is the america of the boys who rushed the colors of every war across the three country knowing

that in them is the life of the republic and those by their daring as ronald reagan said gave up their chance of being husbands and fathers and grand fau fathers and gave up their chance to be revere old men. the america of john mccain is the america of vietnam. fighting the fight even in the most grim circumstances and even in the most distant and hostile corner of the world and standing and defeat the life and liberty of other people in the land. the america of john mccain is generous and bold and secure. she's resourceful. she meets her responsibilities. she speaks quietly because she's strong. america does not boast because she has no need to. the america of john mccain has no need to made great again. america was always great.

>> that faith, that proven devotion, that abiding love, that is what drove my father to the brink of the presidency itself. love defined my father. as a young man he wondered if he'll measure up. i miss him so badly. i want to tell him that he did. but, i take small comfort in this some where in the great beyond where the warriors go, there are two admirals meeting their much loved son. they're telling him he's the greatest among them. dad, i love you. i always have.

all that i am and all that i hope, all that i dream is grounded in what you taught me. you loved me and you showed me what love must be. an ancient greek historians wrote, to have your greatness is woven into my life. it is woven into my mother's life and my sister's life and it is woven into my brothers' lives. it is woven into life and liberty of the country you sacrificed so much to defend. dad, i know you are not perfect, we live in an era where we knocked down old american heroes for all their i mperfections. you gave us an idea to strive for. look, i know you can see this gathering here in this

cathedral. the nation to sit here to remember you. like so many other heroes, you leave us straight in the flag you love, you defended us and you sacrificed it and you have always honored it. it is good to remember, we are americans, we don't put our heroes on pedestals just to remember them. we raise them up because we want to emulate their virtues and this is how we honor them and this is how we'll honor you. my father is gone. my father is gone. i know his life and i know it was great because it was good. as much as i hate to see him go, i do know how it ended. on the afternoon of august 25th,

in front of oak creek in arizona surrounded by the family he loved so much. an old man shook off the scars of battle one last time, rose a new man to pilot one last plate up and up and up, busting clouds left and right, straight on through to the kingdom of heaven and he slipped the earth, put out his hand and touched the face of god. i love you dad.

>> from rick william by robert lewis stevenson.

dig the grave and let me lie, badly did i lay and i gladly die. i laid me down with the will. be this verse, you will get a grave from me, here he lies where he longed to be. home is the sailor and home is the sea. the hunter is home from the hill.

>> sweet land of liberty.

let freedom ring. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪

>> cindy mccain and the wonderful mccain family, president clinton and obamas and clintons and all the other honored guests that are here, ladies and gentlemen, becoming john mccain's friend, is one of the great blessings of me life. being asked to pay tribute to him today is one of the great honors and for that i thank cindy, and the entire mccain family. i also want to thank them including his mother, his brother and sister and the seven wonderful children for the love and support you gave john throughout his life and his service, none more than the last year of his life. you, cindy, have been absolutely

thank youed and saintly and we, his friends can't thank you enough. there is a special satisfaction that comes from serving a cause that's greater than yourself. i heard john say that words hundreds of time and particularly young people, you all heard it a lot as well. for him, we know they were not just words in a speech. they were if creed that he lived by. and the greater cause to which he devoted his life was america. not so much the country defined by its borders but the america of our founding values, freedom, human rights opportunity, democracy, and equal justice under law. john's life he nobly served and

advanced these american values. and remarkably, his death seems to have reminded the american people that these values are what makes us a great nation. not the triable partisanship or personal attack politics that characterized our lives. this week's celebration of the life and values and patriotism of this hero, i think have taken our country above all that. in a way it is the last great gift to john mccain gave america. i want to suggest today that we can give a last great gift to him which is to nurture these values and take them forward in to the years ahead to make

america the better country john always knew it could be. i pray that we will. and i ask you to do so as well. let me try to pay tribute to this great man by describing insurance story of our friendship began in the early 1990s as part of a bipartisan group pushing our government to stop the aggression slaughter in b bosnia. really, our friendship deepens in our travels together around the world with our third amigo, lindsey graham. when you travel with john and even with lindsey along, the purpose is not to have fun. sometimes it seems the purpose was just to survive the schedule

he had organized. john had a restless energy everyday including the day we travel to get the most out of everyday, he possibly could and he did and so did we who were privileged the know him. john travels to learn so he can be a better senator. he travels to represent america as best he could where ever he went and he did. he traveled to support the men and women of our armed services whether in war or in peace where ever they were and they in turn welcome him in not just respect but all as the hero john mccain was, is, and always will be. in shared experiences in long time conversations on these trips.

john and i got to know and trust each other as friends in a way that does not happen because it can happen much anymore in the phonetic washington life as senators. our friendship taught me any things and some jokes that i never have known. john loved to laugh and make other laugh. when he found a joke that somebody liked, he told it over and over again. one of my favorites was about the two inmates going through the food line for dinner at the state, one says to the other, the food is terrible here. and the other says it was a lot better when i was governor.

yeah, i heard that often and i laughed every time because john laughed so hard every time he told it. jo you could not characterize this man, he loved to read history and fiction and talked about it and argued about it. he had a persuasive curiosity. he loved the outdoors and all of god's creatures. much people would be surprised how -- but, of course, john's great strength was his character. he was honest, fair, and

civilized. in all the times we were together, i never heard him say a bigoted word about anyone. the american people saw this great quality most clearly during the 2000s campaign when that woman made an offensive state then senator barack obama. what most impressive of john's reaction was it was pure reflex. he immediately defended his opponent's name and honor and there by elevated that moment by politics and made us a perfect union. personally i can tell you that john was a real friend and accommodating to him was my unusual practices as an obser

observant jew. whether it was a walk with me or a conference that we go to, we would stay in the hotel and have what john would learn to call our peaceful dinner. but, for john, it was not that peaceful. john naturally during these wonderful acts of friendship grumbled all the way of what i was putting it through, you know? right now i think he's probably deriving some pleasure from the fact that it turned out that his funeral is held on a saturday and i had to walk to get here. i am sure right now he would tell me that was devine justice. he ultimately as he did with so much of his life turned these

interpha interphase experiences into a truly hilarious comedy routine. it began with a solemn pronouncement by john that he was converting to judaism. he explained much less solemnly, i do this not because of anybody liking for the religion. it is just for so many years, i had to go along with all of joe's religious nonsense that i might as well convert and get the benefits. one of his great target was the savage elevator at the hotel which were preprogrammed to stop at every floor. john had many virtues but patience was not one of them. therefore that ride in the elevator were not the happiest time we spent together. i say this both to say in

stories how full and genuine was john's acceptance of my religious practices which were different from what he knew but also to make a larger point because i can tell you everything that we did together around the world and here in washington and across america, he showed that same acceptance and respect and curiosity about everybody's religious and everything else about them that was different from himself and his own experiences. i have said that patience was one virtue that john did not have but forgiveness was a great virtue he did have. here is a story to make it clear. once on a trip to hanoi as we

are touring the hanoi hilton, a crowd of vietnamese students recognized john and they began to chant wildly, mccain, mccain, they wanted to take pictures and have him sign autographs. when it was over, i asked him why did you have just a rock star recognition in hanoi. they have been taught that i was treated a lot better here than i was. second, it is because of the normalization of relations between the u.s. and vietnam. well, that was a classic mccain under statement. along with president clinton and john curry, john mccain was the leader in congress in bringing about the normalization of relations between the u.s. and vietnam and extraordinary act of personal forgiveness when you consider what the vietnamese did to him during his five and a

half years as a prisoner of war. after his injuries in vietnam, he could not pursue his ambitions in the navy. so he turned to government service as his greater american cause. of course, i didn't know john and his youth but i don't think from what i heard that he was born with a natural skill of a legislature and yet he learned them and became a great one. he knew when to negotiate and compromise to get something done. he regularly reached across party lines because he knew that was the only way to solve problems and seize opportunities for the people of our country and his state. as a result, his legislative record is extremely impressive. he also fought and lost some big

battles to stop climate change and close the gun show loophole, to broadly reform our immigration laws but that never seemed to get him down or diminishes him for the next battle. he loved to win but he loved a good fight for just cause even if it did not succeed. overall, he won many more than he lost and all of his big wins were achieved with bipartisan support. in 2008, when john was the republican nominee for president, he had this far out idea of asking a democrat to be his running mate, can you believe that? when he talked to me about it, you know john, i am honored but i don't see how you can do it. even though i won my last election as an independent, i am still a registered democrat.

john's response was direct and really -- that's the point, joe, he said with a certain i impatien impatience, you are a democrat and i am a arepublican, we can give the country the bipartisan partnership that it needs for the change. when john returned from the senate after his surgery and voted against the republican healthcare bill, some people accused him of being disloyal to the party and the president but that was not the case. if you listen to this speech, he gave that day, you will know it is no t the case. that speech made clear that his vote was not against that bill but against the mindless partisanship that has taken control both of our political parties and our government and produced totally one-sided responses, the complicated

national problems like healthcare. of course, he was right. in his remarks last july, john also spoke eloquently of our position in the world of america's continuing responsibility for principle leadership in the world, it was as if he thought that may be his last best opportunities to move his colleagues in his country. it is a speech worth reading but i want to quote one sentence, "what greater cause could we hope to serve than helping keep america the strong and as firing and inspirational beacon of liberty and defender of dignity of all human beings." that in short was the mccain's american foreign policy. moral, engaged, and strong. again, these words were not just rhetoric for john. he acted on them and he lived

them and our travels around the world, i can tell you he always reassured our allies and our enemies, standing for america's best values and attacking government whether in moscow or pyongyang or anywhere else. if we were going to a country that was not fully free, john insisted that we meet with the local human rights activist as well as the government. i will never forget that day in miramar. during the dictatorship there, we met three men who was just released and showed terrible signs of physical and logical abuse. they told us they would never survived if they had not heard in jail that the great american

senator, john mccain, has supported their cause, read their names on the u.s. senate floor and demanded their release. another occasion, we visited a refugee camp for syrians who have been forced out of their country to turkey by the brutal aggression of us by the iranians and the russians. we were the first members of congress to visit that camp and there were some concerns of the reception we received. earlier in the day, officials of the u.n. have been there and booed and had shoes thrown at them. when we arrived, a large crowd of syrian refugees had formed and was in fact chanting but rather than booing and throwing shoes, they were cheering and cheering and chanting, words of

welcome and thanks and the two words they chanted most were john mccain. what is most remarkable about these two stories and i can tell you many more is how unremarkable of how they are. the name of john mccain based on the actions of the man of john mccain have become the hope and inspiration for the press of people throughout the world as if there is a source of security for ally countries that shares our values. one last story, one of john's favorite cities in the world was jerusalem. one of his favorite things to do there was to stand on the balcony with lindsey and me of our hotel looking out of the old

city and discussing all the religious and political history that happened there over the centuries. so when i first told john that i had decided not to run >> when i first told john i decided not to run for senate again in 2012. he was puzzled and frankly even a little bit angry. then the next day he called me. and this is my best recollection of the conversation. he said, you know, i've been thinking. if you go out into the private sector, you're going to make some more money. and then you can afford to buy a second home in jerusalem that has an extra home for me. with a balcony. where we can look out and talk about the city and its history. since then, when i talked to john or visited with