Gulf Coast Navy & Sen. McCain

U.S. Senator and retired naval officer John Sidney McCain III (R-Ariz.), who died Aug. 25 days before his 82nd birthday, will be buried at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., on Sept. 2 following a week of national memorial services from Arizona to the nation’s Capitol. The senator, and former Vietnam POW, will be laid to rest next to his Naval Academy classmate Adm. Chuck Larson, who both also served together for basic naval aviation training at Pensacola, Fla. McCain graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958. "As classmates at the U.S. Naval Academy and Naval Air Station Pensacola flight school, Senator McCain and Admiral Chuck Larson developed a close friendship that endured throughout their adult lives," a media release statement from McCain's office said. Before he died of leukemia in 2014, Larson reserved four plots for himself, McCain, and their spouses at the Naval Academy cemetery, according to the media release. (Source: The Hill 08/26/18) McCain was commissioned an ensign in the Navy on June 4, 1958. He spent two years as a Naval Aviator in training at NAS Pensacola, Fla., through September 1959, and later at Corpus Christi, Texas. In June 1962, McCain was on alert duty aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise when it was helping enforce a naval quarantine of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In November 1963, he returned to shore duty for nine months on the staff of the Naval Air Basic Training Command at Pensacola. In September 1964, he became a flight instructor with Training Squadron Seven (VT 7) at then-Naval Air Auxiliary Station Meridian, Miss., where McCain Field had been named for his grandfather, the late Adm. John S. McCain of Teoc, Miss.