Cindy McCain

Cindy Hensley McCain
Born	Cindy Lou Hensley (1953-07-29) July 29, 1953 Los Angeles County, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Southern California
Occupation(s)	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 July 29, 1953 in Los Angeles County, California) is the wife of United States Senator and 2000 and 2008 presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona. She is chair of Hensley & Co., one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the nation. She founded and ran the American Voluntary Medical Team from 1988 to 1995, which organized trips for medical personnel to provide emergency care to disaster-struck or war-torn third-world areas. She continues to be an active philanthropist and serves on boards of several charitable organizations.

Early life and education

Cindy Lou Hensley grew up in affluent circumstances in Phoenix, Arizona, the daughter and only child of James Hensley, who founded Hensley & Co. in 1955, and Marguerite Hensley. She attended Madison Meadows Elementary and was a rodeo queen in 1968. She went to Central High School in Phoenix. She graduated from the latter in 1972, having been a cheerleader there.

Hensley received her undergraduate degree in education and a masters in special education from the University of Southern California.She was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. There she participated in a movement therapy pilot program that laid the way for a standard treatment for children with severe disabilities; she published the work Movement Therapy: A Possible Approach in 1978. Declining a role in the family business, she then began a special education teaching career working with children with disabilities at Agua Fria High School in Avondale, Arizona.

Marriage and family

Hensley met John McCain in 1979 at a military reception in Hawaii. He was the U.S. Navy liaison officer to the United States Senate, eighteen years her senior, and in a somewhat troubled marriage to his first wife, Carol. McCain and Hensley quickly began a relationship; he divorced Carol in April 1980, and he and Cindy were married on May 17, 1980 in Phoenix. Her father's business and political contacts helped gain her husband a foothold into Arizona politics; she campaigned with her husband door-to-door during his successful first bid for U.S. Congress in 1982, with her wealth from an expired trust from her parents providing significant loans to the campaign.

After several miscarriages, Cindy Hensley McCain gave birth to her first three children: Meghan (born 1984), John Sidney IV (known as "Jack") (born 1986), and James (born 1988). The family stayed in Arizona; her parents lived across the street and helped her raise her children while her husband was frequently in Washington.

American Voluntary Medical Team and adoption

In 1988, Cindy McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT), 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, Kuwait, Iraq, Nicaragua, India, Bangladesh and El Salvador. She led 55 of these missions over the next seven years, with each being of at least two weeks' duration. AVMT also supplied treatment to poor sick children around the world.

While at Mother Teresa's orphanage in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1991 — as part of AVMT's assistance team following the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone — she met two infant girls she decided needed to be brought to the United States for medical treatment. She decided to adopt one of the girls (her husband readily agreeing), later named Bridget (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. In 1993, Cindy McCain and the AVMT were honored with an award from Food for the Hungry.

Prescription drug addiction and theft

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

In January 1993, McCain terminated Gosinski's employment on grounds of budgetary reasons. In spring 1993, Gosinski tipped off the Drug Enforcement Administration to investigate McCain's drug theft, and a federal investigation ensued. McCain's defense team, led by Washington lawyer John Dowd, secured an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's office that limited her punishment to financial restitution and enrollment in a diversion program, 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. In April 1994, Dowd requested that Maricopa County officials investigate Gosinski for extortion. The Phoenix New Times was about to publish a negatively-cast article about the whole affair. Cindy McCain pre-empted this 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." 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 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 and an award dinner in her honor was canceled citing poor ticket sales. In the end, both Gosinski's lawsuit and the extortion investigation against him were dropped.

AVMT concluded its activities in 1995. That year, McCain founded a new organization, the Hensley Family Foundation, which donates monies towards children's programs in Arizona and nationally, but she was largely a stay-at-home mom during the balance of the 1990s.

2000s

Although wary of the media, McCain was active in her husband's eventually unsuccessful campaign for President of the United States in 2000. She impressed Republican voters with her looks and elegance at coffee shops and other small campaign settings. She was upset by the notorious smear tactics against her husband in the South Carolina primary that year, which included allegations against her adopted daughter Bridget that she found "despicable", but eventually forgave those responsible. She was chosen as the chair of the Arizona delegation to the 2000 Republican National Convention.

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. following her father's death. 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. She became actively involved with Operation Smile in 2001, taking parts in trips with it to Morocco, Vietnam, and India. She was honored by the organization in 2005, and sits on its board of directors. She joined the board of directors of CARE in 2005. She is on the board of the HALO Trust, and has visited operations to remove landmines in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and Angola. She views her role on in these organizations as watching them in the field and to ensure they are frugal and their money is being spent effectively.

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

McCain suffered a near-fatal stroke in April 2004 due to high blood pressure, but after several months of physical therapy to overcome her leg and arm limitations made a mostly full recovery, although she still suffers from some short-term memory loss and difficulties in writing. She owns a home in Coronado, California, next to the Hotel del Coronado; her family had vacationed in Coronado growing up, and now she went there for recuperation and family get-togethers.

Role in 2008 presidential campaign

She has been active and visible in her husband's presidential campaign during 2007 and 2008, including making statements critical of the Bush administration for not deploying enough troops during the Iraq War, while still returning to Arizona frequently to attend to domestic duties. 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. She would not attend Cabinet meetings, but would continue her involvement in overseas non-profit organizations and would urge Americans to do the same globally or locally.

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." Days later, she publicly appeared aside her husband during a press conference in response to a newspaper report regarding his connection to a lobbyist.