That day John McCain visited the newspaper on Hilton Head, before the politics got dirty

John McCain was an undeclared candidate for president the day he insisted on coming to The Island Packet newsroom on Hilton Head Island.

It was Memorial Day 1999.

The day tells a lot about the remarkable life that ended Saturday.

I was the editorial page editor, and I told his people that it would be a waste of his time because we didn’t endorse in national races, and we didn’t write editorials on national topics, such campaign finance reform.

It didn’t matter. McCain insisted on spending time at our small, daily newspaper.

The office was empty that day, except for the two of us.

It certainly was no holiday for McCain.

At 8 a.m., he met with members of the Sun City Republican Club. At 10 a.m., he participated in the Navy League’s sixth annual Memorial Day observance at Shelter Cove Harbour. At 11 a.m., he was back at Sun City, helping dedicate a Sun City Veterans Association plaque. At 5 p.m., he would be in Sea Pines for a Memorial Day cookout sponsored by the Hilton Head Island Republican Club.

And in the afternoon, he had private meetings.

Including one with me.

I showed him around our newsroom, something of a Hanoi Hilton itself in that cramped building off Pope Avenue. It had been a model home at one time. I offered him coffee from an oversized closet that our clever copy desk chief had named the Virgule Lounge.

The old maverick didn’t say anything to get himself in trouble, like a later comment would do when he said the Confederate flag then flying atop our Capitol dome was a “symbol of racism and slavery.”

And he didn’t say anything that would sweep the nation’s news cycle like he did eight years later, in another run for president, when we reported his observation at Sun City that Donald Rumsfeld “will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.”

He praised our armed forces in this Marine Corps county, but said the military needed better leadership from the White House. He said he would never send troops out on a whim, and he would never take a poll on foreign-policy issues.

McCain put most of his chips on South Carolina in the 2000 race. I’d put his face time with me in the “leave no stone unturned” category.

He lost the GOP nomination to George W. Bush. When we met, he had no idea how dirty that race would get. It’s still in South Carolina’s hall of shame.

But on that Memorial Day, we chatted about his true fights.

We talked about his friend who had retired to Hilton Head, U.S. Air Force Col. George McKnight. For two years, they were cellmates as prisoners of war in Vietnam.

And on this day — far, far away, on an island celebrating the holiday weekend that blasts off another tourist season — the two POWs who spent a combined 12 years in torturous captivity were together again. Together, they dropped a memorial wreath into Shelter Cove Harbour.

McKnight spoke briefly about Memorial Day.

“Memories of war ... memories of pain, memories of hunger, memories of isolation and years of separation. Sad memories slowly fading away,” he said.

He introduced McCain as someone fighting new battles on the battlefield of Washington.

They briefly embraced and McCain quipped that he was “trying to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan, and it is getting harder and harder all the time.”

McCain had nothing to gain by coming to our newsroom on that day. As the nation mourns his passing, I still respect him for it.

This story was originally published August 28, 2018 at 3:02 PM.