Carol McCain

Carol McCain
McCain in November 1986
Born	Carol Shepp (1938-02-19) February 19, 1938 (age 79) Pennsylvania, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Model, manager, event planner
Known for	Ex-wife of John McCain
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Alasdair E. Swanson (m. 1958; div. 1964) John McCain (m. 1965; div. 1980)
Children	3

Carol Shepp McCain (born February 19, 1938) is a former model, director of the White House Visitors Office, and event planner. She was the first wife of United States Senator and two-time presidential candidate John McCain.

Carol Shepp grew up in Philadelphia. She first knew John McCain while he was attending the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis from 1954 to 1958. In 1958 she married one of his midshipman classmates, Alasdair E. Swanson, who had been a football and basketball star there. She and her husband, who became a Navy pilot, had two children, Douglas (born 1959) and Andrew (born 1962), and lived in Pensacola, Florida. The couple subsequently divorced in June 1964, after she sued him for infidelity. Five feet eight inches tall, Shepp was a swimsuit and runway model for Jantzen swimwear in Philadelphia.

Shepp met McCain again when he was stationed at the Naval Air Basic Training Command at Pensacola in 1964 and after her first divorce, they began dating. On July 3, 1965, Shepp married McCain in Philadelphia. The following year, John McCain adopted her two children. The McCains then had a daughter named Sidney in September 1966.

John McCain was shot down and badly injured over North Vietnam on October 26, 1967, beginning what would be five and a half years as a prisoner of war. During his captivity, she raised their children by herself in Orange Park, Florida, with the assistance of friends and neighbors in the Navy-oriented community. She sent frequent letters and packages to him, few of which the North Vietnamese let through. She became active in the POW/MIA movement, while those around her wore bracelets with her husband's name and capture date on them.

While visiting her family in Philadelphia on Christmas Eve 1969, Carol McCain skidded and crashed into a telephone pole as she was navigating icy, isolated country roads while driving alone. She was thrown from her car into the snow, going into shock. Hours later she was found and taken to Bryn Mawr Hospital. She had two smashed legs, a broken pelvis, broken arm, and a ruptured spleen. She spent six months in the hospital and underwent 23 operations over the following two years in order to rebuild her legs with rods and pins as well as undergo extensive physical therapy. She did not tell her husband about the accident in her letters, believing he already had enough to worry about, and the U.S. State Department warned her surgeon not to mention anything to the press, lest it worsen his treatment in captivity. Businessman and POW advocate Ross Perot paid for Carol's medical care, and she remained grateful, later remarking: "The military families are in Ross's heart and in his soul...There are millions of us who are extremely grateful to Ross Perot". Years after John found out about Perot's help, he said "we loved him for it". Carol was interviewed on CBS Evening News in 1970 and said Christmas had no meaning for her without her husband but that she carried on with it for their children.