Senator John McCain, of Arizona, became the 2008 Republican nominee for President of the United States in one of the most talked about presidential campaigns in years. Filled with a number of firsts, for both the Republicans and Democrats, this race for the presidency has become a landmark historical event.

John Sidney McCain III was born into a military family—both his father and grandfather were four-star admirals—on August 29, 1936, at the Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone where his father was on duty. He has an older sister and a younger brother. His widowed mother, Roberta Wright McCain, is currently active in his campaign for the presidency.

McCain spent his childhood and adolescent years living on many different American naval bases. He graduated from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1954, and was appointed to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. McCain graduated in 1958. After two years of flight school, McCain became a naval aviator. He requested combat duty in 1966. A year later, while on a mission over North Vietnam, his plane was shot down by a missile, and he was captured by the Vietcong. In an attempt to embarrass the United States and generate propaganda, McCain’s captors offered him early release because of his father’s position as U.S. Naval Commander in the Pacific. McCain refused special treatment and spent five and a half years as a Vietnamese POW—two of them in solitary confinement. After returning to the states in 1973, McCain underwent extensive physical therapy, and then attended the National War College in Washington, D.C. In 1974, with his flight status reinstated, he became the commanding officer of a training squadron in Florida. In 1977, he became the naval liaison to the U.S. Senate, an appointment that turned his sights toward the political arena.

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