Cardinals’ Larry Fitzgerald lovingly eulogizes Sen. John McCain

People holding US flags and campaign style placards with the word “McCain” lined part of the 8-mile (13-kilometer) route that the motorcade with McCain’s casket will take from the Arizona State Capitol to the church.

Later that morning, service-men and -women awaited the senator’s arrival to the capitol on what would have been McCain’s 82nd birthday.

Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, received McCain’s casket with a prayer. Several men saluted the casket.

The McCain farewell began Wednesday and Thursday in Arizona, where he and Cindy McCain raised their family. “I’m never going to forgive it”, she said during a June episode of “The View”.

“I was only about 20 at the time”.

“While from very different worlds, we developed a meaningful friendship”, said Fitzgerald, adding that McCain didn’t judge others on their skin color, gender or bank account but on their character.

Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald was one of six speakers Thursday at a memorial service in Phoenix for Sen.

On Saturday, McCain’s funeral procession will pause by the Vietnam Memorial before heading to the Washington National Cathedral for a formal funeral service.

Throughout the brief ceremony, McCain’s widow Cindy, his children, grandchildren and his 106-year-old mother, Roberta, said stalwart facing his casket. “I met him and shook his hand and he touched me in that moment”.

Pallbearers include Biden, actor Warren Beatty, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Rhode Island Democratic Sen.

“He had America’s fighting spirit, our noble idealism, our solemn patriotism, and our slightly irreverent streak – all rolled into one”, said McConnell, a colleague of McCain’s for 33 years in the Senate. Senator McCain, we will miss the blessings of being in your presence.

Here are further details of the weekend’s events honoring the late senator.

“We both loved the Senate”.

Among those who travelled to Phoenix was a group of more than 80 Vietnamese Americans from the Little Saigon community of Orange County in southern California. “I’m a Democrat. And I loved John McCain”. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were among those in attendance, along with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But it was his military service, punctuated by years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, that molded McCain’s political life.

But he went on to work to mend US-Vietnam relations and helped Vietnamese refugees in the US reunite with their families.

“Because above all, we understood the same thing”.

President Donald Trump is leaving open the possibility of relaunching military wargames with South Korea while saying there’s no reason at this time to spend millions of dollars on the exercises.

Benson called him the “last pioneer for the state of Arizona”. A man who at times – just as he sacrificed himself for his fellow POWs in Vietnam – willingly chose to sacrifice his own political gain in order to accomplish what he believed was best for all. “To me that’s a maverick”.

The public viewing followed a brief ceremony for family and dignitaries led by Republican Governor Doug Ducey, who has said he would appoint McCain’s immediate successor in the Senate only after McCain’s burial on Sunday.

Nearly a quarter of McCain’s fellow senators, Democrats and Republicans, traveled to Arizona to remember him during a carefully executed program that began at the Arizona State Capitol, continued to the Baptist church where he worshiped and ended at the Phoenix airport, where hundreds of Arizona National Guardsmen gave him one final salute. He attended the United States Naval Academy from 1954 until 1958, training as a pilot.