Let me say up front that I’m not girly-man, I’m not overly sensitive to dramatic moments. I’m a more or less typical guy, who when younger, fished and hunted at lot. I’m a veteran, and love football, boxing and MMA. I’ve got a bunch of guns and am a CHL holder. I say all of this to frame how a story I heard recently really touched me.
I’d heard bits and pieces about the adoption before, but never first hand – and never the full story. I wasn’t watching the convention on Tuesday night when the story was told, so I only got the details today when Wes Gullett was interviewed on Fox News. What he described touched me and I have to be honest and say that it brought a lump to my throat.
The following was taken from the Tucson Citizen, published 9/3/2008:
Wes Gullett, a McCain organizer in Arizona and a former state director for McCain's senate office, said the two 10-week-old girls were brought to Arizona in 1991 by Cindy McCain, who traveled to Bangladesh with a group of medical volunteers and was so taken by the pair that she brought them home.
The girls, both in need of medical care that they wouldn't likely get in Bangladesh, were brought back to health and were adopted by the McCains and Gulletts.
"Cindy spends much of her time working throughout the world in places most of us only see on the news," Gullett said. "She works with the poor, bringing them medical care, food and hope. She has done this for years and still does it today."
Cindy McCain didn't go to Bangladesh with the intention of adopting a child, but the girls won over her heart. A similar thing happened to Gullett and his then-wife, who agreed to care for one of the girls without knowing then that they would end up adopting the child.
Bridget McCain suffered from a severe cleft pallet, and Nicole Gullett Petersen, who was born prematurely, was dangerously malnourished. The girls were treated at a children's hospital in Phoenix and were later adopted by the couples.
Gullett described the senator's reaction when first seeing his daughter.
"That day he was not the tough war-hero senator. No. He was like every other new father, full of love and emotion," Gullett said. "That day my friend John McCain and his wife answered a call for help with love and I know they will always answer the call of those in need because they have done so time and time again throughout their lives."
Gullett's daughter, now 17 years old with a beaming smile, stood beside her father on stage as he delivered the five-minute speech Tuesday night. Bridget McCain held her mother's hand during the address.
Petersen and Bridget McCain are good friends who had sleep-overs when they were younger and hung out during vacations taken together by both families. She described the McCains as a second family.
After hearing that story, I looked a little deeper into Cindy McCain’s philanthropy.
It all started in 1988 when, inspired by a vacation visit four years earlier to substandard medical facilities on Truk Lagoon, Cindy McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT). It was a non-profit organization that organized trips for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel to provide MASH-like emergency medical care to disaster-struck or war-torn third-world areas such as Micronesia, Vietnam (before relations were normalized between them and the U.S.), Kuwait (arriving five days after the conclusion of the Gulf War), Iraq, Nicaragua, India, Bangladesh and El Salvador. She led 55 of these missions over the next seven years, with each being of at least two weeks' duration. AVMT also supplied treatment to poor sick children around the world. In 1993, Cindy McCain and the AVMT were honored with an award from Food for the Hungry.
Did you get that? 55 missions of at least two weeks’ duration, over 7 years? Wow.
This work, done behind the scenes, by Cindy McCain is a further tribute to John McCain. I may not agree with all of his policies and positions, but damn, he knows how to pick women.