John McCain

Born into a Navy family in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, McCain graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958 and flew ground-attack aircraft off carriers during Vietnam. Shot down over Hanoi in October 1967, he was captured, tortured, and held until 1973; he refused early release and left with lifelong injuries. He retired as a Navy captain in 1981, moved to Arizona, and entered Congress in 1983, serving two terms in the House before winning a Senate seat in 1987. Over six terms he earned a "maverick" label for moderate stances on campaign finance, LGBT rights, and gun regulations, co-authoring the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002 and receiving the Profile in Courage Award in 1999. He lost the 2000 Republican primary to George W. Bush, then won the 2008 nomination but fell to Barack Obama in the general election. He later opposed much of Obama's agenda, chaired Armed Services, refused to back Trump in 2016, and in 2017 cast the deciding vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. Diagnosed with glioblastoma that same year, he died in August 2018, four days shy of 82.