John McCain has announced where he wants to be buried – and it’s not next to his father and grandfather at Arlington National Cemetery.
Instead the 81-year-old Arizona senator says he wants to be buried next to his best friend Charles ‘Chuck’ Larson at the Naval Academy’s cemetery on the Severn River in Maryland.
McCain trained at the Naval Academy with Larson and detailed in his memoir The Restless Wave that he wants his final resting place to be next to his dear friend who passed away in 2014.
In his book The Restless Wave, McCain says he wants to be buried at the US Naval Academy cemetery in Maryland
He revealed he wants to be buried next to his Naval Academy best friend Charles ‘Chuck’ Larson who passed away in 2014, his gravestone pictured above
In the book McCain wrote: ‘I want to…take my leave bound for a place near my old friend Chuck Larson, in the cemetery on the Severn (River)’
The Academy has confirmed that the Arizona Senator already secured a plot at the cemetery that is ‘very close’ to where his friend Larson rests, Severn River pictured in background
‘I want to smell the rose-scented breeze and feel the sun on my shoulders. I want to watch the hawks hunt from the sycamore, and then take my leave bound for a place near my old friend Chuck Larson, in the cemetery on the Severn (River), back where it began,’ McCain wrote in his latest book.
McCain attended the Naval Academy from 1954 to 1958, pictured in his final year
The Naval Academy has confirmed that the Vietnam veteran has a dedicated plot at the cemetery that is ‘very close’ to Larson’s grave, according to AZCentral.
McCain describes the plot as ‘a beautiful spot near where our paths first crossed’.
McCain attended the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland from 1954 to 1958 where he was best friends with Larson.
Larson went on to serve as Commander in Chief of United States Pacific Command and serve twice as Superintendent of the Naval Academy from 1983 to 1986 and 1994 to 1998.
He passed away in 2014 at the age of 77 and is buried at the academy cemetery.
McCain said that Larson was a friend he ‘looked up to since we were boys’.
Speaking on those who have passed away in his book, McCain reflected on his old friend.
McCain, left, and Larson, right, were nicknamed the Odd Couple during their school days. Larson went on to serve as Superintendent of the Naval Academy twice
Larson, pictured right with Bill Clinton, left, and former US Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton, center, in May 1998 at a US Naval Academy graduation ceremony
On Thursday McCain took to Twitter to celebrate his 37th wedding anniversary with wife Cindy
‘It’s up to us to make the most of it, make it amount to more than the sum of our days. God knows, my dear friend Chuck Larson, whom I had looked up to since we were boys, made the most of his,’ he wrote.
McCain’s biographer Robert Timberg wrote in John McCain: An American Odyssey that the best friends were known on campus as the ‘Odd Couple’.
‘McCain short, scrappy, the the consummate screwup, Larson the model midshipman, tall, handsome, smooth, bright,’ Timberg wrote.
In the book, Timberg describes Larson as ‘the calm if mischievous eye of the hurricane’ while McCain ‘was the hurricane itself’.
After graduating, the two lived together while attending flight schools.
Upon Larson’s death McCain said it was a ‘privilege and an honor, as a young man and an old one, to serve in Chuck’s shadow’.
‘… Together we wish Admiral Chuck Larson, as we wish every good sailor, fair winds and following seas,’ he added.
Despite battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, McCain was in good spirits on Thursday, taking to social media to celebrate his 37th anniversary with his wife Cindy.
‘Happy 37th anniversary to my love @cindymccain – time flies when you’re having fun’ he wrote.