Faith of My Fathers by John McCain Page B

he did not tell the truth about something, as best he knew it.”
    My mother recalls playing gin rummy with my father once when she jokingly accused him of cheating. He reacted so strongly to the accusation, with such evident distress over the charge, admonishing her to “never say such a thing again,” that she never did. Not even in jest.
    The Navy revered my father’s and grandfather’s shared ideals and offered them adventure. It promised them the perfect life, and they were grateful to their last breath for the privilege.
    Happy in his profession, my father worked every day, without exception. On Christmas morning, after we had opened our presents in front of the Christmas tree, he would excuse himself, change into his uniform, and leave for his office. I cannot recall a single instance when he came home from work earlier than eight o’clock in the evening.
    As any other child would, I resented my father’s absences, interpreting them as a sign that he loved his work more than his children. This was unfair of me, and I regret having felt that way. The most important relationship in my father’s life had been his bond with my grandfather. That cherished bond influenced every major decision my father made throughout his life. Yet my grandfather had been absent from his family at least as often as my father was away from us, probably more often. He had done his duty as his country had asked him to, and his family understood, and admired him for it.
    My father felt no shame in attending just as diligently to the responsibilities of his office, nor should he have. I am certain that he wanted to share with me the warm affection that he and his father had shared. But he wanted me to know also that a man’s life should be big enough to encompass both duty to family and duty to country. That can be a hard lesson for a boy to learn. It was a hard lesson for me.
    He worked hard to please his superiors and accepted every assignment as an opportunity to prove himself. Even when he viewed a new assignment as sidetracking him from his pursuit of important commands, he never betrayed the slightest hint of bitterness. “No matter what job you get,” he told my mother, “you can make a good one out of it.”
    He once helped a friend get a prestigious position on an admiral’s staff. My father thought him to be a born leader and expected great things from him in the Navy. But the man didn’t like the long hours associated with the job. Nor did his wife, who openly resented the demands placed on young officers and their families.
    Late one Sunday night, the admiral on whose staff my father’s friend served called him to get the combination for a safe that contained classified documents he wanted to review. The young officer started to give him the combination over the phone, and the admiral cut him off abruptly. “Don’t you dare give me that combination over the phone,” he admonished his aide. Both my parents were shocked at their friend’s careless regard for his professional responsibilities. My mother remarked, “Had it been Jack, he would have said, ‘Sir, I’m on my way.’” It would never have occurred to my father to respond in any other way.
    My father was devout, although the demands of his profession sometimes made regular churchgoing difficult. His mother, Katherine, was the daughter of an Episcopal minister, and she had ably seen to her son’s religious instruction, no small feat in a home where the head of the household happily indulged a variety of vices.
    My father didn’t talk about God or the importance of religious devotion. He didn’t proselytize. But he always kept with him a tattered, dog-eared prayerbook, from which he would pray aloud for an hour, on his knees, twice every day.
    He drank too much, which did not become him. And I often felt that my father’s religious devotion was intended in part to help