WASHINGTON -- Two Arkansans stood elbow to elbow with U.S. Sen. John McCain -- one in a campaign war room, the other in a Middle East war zone.
Both are mourning the death of the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, as are former White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty and the state's two U.S. senators, John Boozman and Tom Cotton.
Former Little Rock resident Rachael Dean Wilson worked at McCain's Crystal City, Va., headquarters in 2007.
"I basically kept calling the campaign until they let me have an internship," she recalled Monday.
There wasn't much of a bandwagon when she got there.
The polls were plummeting, and the bank accounts were dangerously low.
"They basically ran out of money and had to get rid of half of the staff. ... That's about the time I started interning," she recalled.
Candidate McCain never gave up, she said.
"It was an amazing opportunity for me to ... see up close his grit and determination," she said. "He thought that he was the best candidate for the job, and he was going to rise above whatever campaign troubles they had."
Wilson stayed long enough to witness the campaign's unlikely resurrection, to celebrate McCain's nomination in St. Paul, Minn., in September and to witness his concession speech in Phoenix on Election Day.
After finishing her classes at the University of Pennsylvania, she joined the Arizona senator's staff on Capitol Hill, eventually serving as his press secretary and communications director.
Now a regional public relations director with Whole Foods Market, she's in Phoenix helping prepare for the memorial tributes in McCain's home state.
"It is absolutely the honor of my life that I got to spend seven years working for him and learning from him," she said. "He believed in American exceptionalism and that this country is unique and our ideals are special.
"Serving a cause greater than our own self-interest, that's what his whole life was about."
Mouaz Moustafa, a native of Damascus, Syria, and a naturalized U.S. citizen, never worked on McCain's presidential campaign. When he moved to Washington, it was to work in the offices of then-U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder and then-U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, both Democrats from Arkansas.
The former Hot Springs resident shifted his focus from domestic politics to international affairs during the Arab Spring, urging lawmakers to intervene after civil war started in his native land.
As executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, he quickly discovered that McCain was an ally.
When McCain made a surprise visit to Syria's Aleppo province in May 2013, Moustafa accompanied him, watching him interact with people who suffered.
It was risky to enter Syria, but war zones didn't rattle the former prisoner of war, Moustafa said.
"Sen. McCain was, I think, incredibly brave. At the time, the State Department didn't want that trip to happen. I don't think the White House wanted that trip to happen. But Sen. McCain was adamant. I think what he wanted to do was shine the light on what was going on in Syria," Moustafa said.
The visit made headlines around the world.
It also lifted the spirits of those battling for a democratic Syria, Moustafa said.
"There were people out there fighting for their freedom, fighting against tyranny, fighting for the same values that John McCain believed in, which are the values of the United States," Moustafa said. "John McCain was an unwavering ally to them."
McCain met with rebel leaders, doctors, aid workers and Syrians forced from their homes by the bloody conflict.
"[He] let them know that he knew about their suffering and he cared about it and that the United States and the people of the United States stood by them," Moustafa said. "That was a huge deal for them, a huge morale booster."
McCain's death, he said, is a tremendous loss.
Pro-democracy Syrians, he said, are "grieving and mourning the loss of John McCain as if it were the loss of a family member. That all speaks to how amazing and one of a kind person ... he was. There will never be another John McCain. A great man, in every sense of the word."
Tributes to the maverick Republican continue to pour in from Democrats and Republicans alike in Arkansas.
McLarty, a Hope native who served in the Clinton administration, said McCain was willing to reach across the aisle for the good of the country.
"[We] didn't always agree. Sen. McCain did not vote for our economic plan, which was disappointing, but we were able to work closely together on trade issues and foreign policy issues where he and President Clinton and I found agreement much more often than not," McLarty said. "In my view, there's no question that John McCain was a patriot, a statesman and, most of all, just a true American hero."
McCain's two Senate colleagues from Arkansas are also lamenting his death.
"John McCain was an American original. At every stage of his life, from a distinguished record as a Navy aviator to his fierce courage as a POW and then [six terms] in the United States Congress, he was a tireless advocate for our troops and our veterans, and patriotism ran through his very core," said Cotton, a Republican from Dardanelle who served with McCain on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
McCain could be confrontational.
"A relationship with John McCain [meant] plenty of hugs and laughs and plenty of yelling and fighting," Cotton said. "If you haven't been on the receiving end of a tirade from John McCain, I'm not sure you have a relationship with him."
McCain lived valiantly, Cotton said.
"Courage was a watch word throughout John McCain's life, whether the courage to break the rules as a young midshipman or young ensign in the Navy or courage to withstand 5.5 years of imprisonment and mistreatment and torture [in Vietnam or] ... the courage in the Congress, as well, to take some occasionally lonely stands," Cotton said.
While McCain's "temperament is legendary," Boozman said he was never a McCain target.
"When I was elected to the Senate he was one of the first people that came up and greeted me and told me how much that he was glad I was there and all those kinds of things," the Republican from Rogers said. "He was a bigger than life figure. ... You always listened to his opinion because you knew that it was coming from his heart."
Boozman said he plans to fly to Arizona to attend McCain's memorial service Thursday. Cotton plans to attend the service Friday in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.
Both men want to find an appropriate way to honor McCain's memory.
That task can be taken up after the funeral is over, Boozman said.
"Some sort of bipartisan group getting together, weighing all of the different options, I think is a very, very good idea," Boozman said. "I don't know exactly what we're going to do, but I do think at the end of the day we will come together and do something very meaningful."
A Section on 08/29/2018