by John McCain
This is not to say that I value my friends less than other people value theirs. On the contrary, I have made friends with many people over the years, and whether I see them or not, whether they are still living or not, their friendship honored me, and honors me still. Many of my friendships exist only in memory. But they are memories I cherish for the lessons they taught me and the values they imparted to me, gifts that proved invaluable in later years.
At each new school I arrived eager to make, by means of my insolent attitude, new friends to compensate for the loss of others. At each new school I grew more determined to assert my crude individualism. At each new school I became a more unrepentant pain in the neck.
These are the attitudes I brought to Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, when I enrolled there, Class of ’54. My parents had resolved to put an end to our haphazard education and arranged for my sister, my brother, and me to attend private boarding schools. I was sent to Episcopal to prepare for my unavoidable appointment to the United States Naval Academy three years later.
I liked EHS more than I liked my previous schools. No doubt my memory of it has softened over time as it became mixed with nostalgia for the pleasurable vanities of youth—vanities that the Naval Academy worked hard to suppress in its resolve to make a man of me. I did not at first acquaintance recognize Episcopal and its antique traditions as hospitable. Unlike my classmates, I arrived without any allegiance to those traditions, having had no share of them in my roving childhood. The traditions in which I was raised were peculiar to military families, and the dimensions of my small Navy world had mapped the limits of experience for most of my earliest friends.
When I entered Episcopal I encountered another small world, but one so unfamiliar to me that I thought it exotic. The Episcopal High School Class of 1954 was all male and all white. But more than the racial bigotry and gender segregation of the times distinguished the class from the rest of our generation. Most of the students came from families who lived south of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Mississippi River, and their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had preceded them at the school. Almost all were sons of wealthy men. None but me were sons of professional officers in the armed services.
The Navy has, of course, its own aristocracy, but not one that seemed to me as exclusive, mannered, and fixed as the aristocracy from which EHS drew its ranks. Most of my classmates were so settled in their society that they had an air of serenity uncommon in the young. They were not snobs. But they had envisaged the whole of their futures before they came to EHS, and what they had foreseen was so pleasant an existence that the certainty of it made them very self-assured young men.
After graduation, about half of my class would enroll in the University of Virginia, an arcadia of genteel Southern learning. The other half would venture north to one or another Ivy League school where wealthy children from North and South mixed and the friction of differing regional cultures was eased by their common appreciation for refined living. When they had completed their education, many of my classmates returned to their families and settled into careers in their fathers’ businesses, law firms, and medical practices.
I, too, had a clear sense of how my life would unfold after I left Episcopal. I, too, was destined to join my father’s business. But I knew my life would diverge from those of my classmates as sharply as my childhood had differed from theirs. I was on leave from the Navy while I attended high school. And the Navy expected me to return when I graduated.
I cannot recall any other student at EHS who expected to enter military service. Some would be drafted into the Army. I am sure they accepted that responsibility without complaint, and served honorably. But no one in the Class of ’54 except me anticipated a career in the armed forces.
The most pervasive military influence at the school was the heroic legends taken from the annals of Civil War history. More precisely, they were the stories of Confederate heroes. There is a memorial at the school that commemorates those students who were among the fallen in the Civil War. It’s a long list. You would be hard-pressed to find among those honored dead the name of anyone who gave his last full measure of devotion to the Union. More Episcopal graduates died in the Civil War than in any subsequent war in our nation’s history.
EHS gave me a sense of what life could be like were I somehow to elude a Navy career. On a school holiday, some friends and I visited Princeton University. Long afterward, I would daydream about enrolling at Princeton, joining one of its stately eating clubs, and sharing in the romance of a place that seemed to me to offer equal parts of scholastic excellence and gracious leisure. But I was never so enthralled by the attraction of such a life that I deluded myself into sincerely believing it would be mine. I was bound for the Naval Academy, and while I seldom discussed with my high school friends the fate that awaited me, I knew that were we ever to meet again, they would find me in uniform.
My father never ordered me to attend the Naval Academy. Although I am sure we must have talked about it from time to time, I cannot recall the conversations. There are no scenes in my memory of sitting in my father’s study listening to him expound on the virtues of an Academy education, or explain the reasons why I must follow him to Annapolis as he had followed his father. Neither do I recall any arguments with my parents about my wanting to consider an alternative future. I remember simply recognizing my eventual enrollment at the Academy as an immutable fact of life, and accepting it without comment.
I remember my parents frequently commenting on it to their friends. “He’s going to the Naval Academy,” they would casually remark, not with the evident satisfaction one derives from a welcome discovery of a child’s potential, but as if they were discussing an inheritance that had been marked for my eventual possession. It was as if they were saying, “Someday this house will be Johnny’s”—which, in a way, was what they meant.
My father and grandfather believed they had discovered the perfect life for a man. To them, the Navy was the most accommodating profession for good men who craved adventure. They never imagined possessing a greater treasure than a life at sea, and they regarded it as a legacy they were proud to bestow on their descendants, who, they assumed, would be appropriately grateful.
EHS offered me more than a glimpse at a different culture. It shared certain aspects of service academies. Life there was regimented. Jackets and ties were worn at all times. Students attended chapel every morning. On Sundays, we held morning services at the church on Seminary Hill and evening services at the chapel. The academics were superb and serious. But athletics were accorded equal importance in our education. Classes were held in the morning, including Saturday morning. We broke for lunch at twelve-thirty. The afternoons were devoted to athletic training.
Demerits were handed out for every infraction, large and small, of school regulations, and I piled them up. I was chronically late for class. I kept my room in a near permanent state of disorder and filth. I mocked the dress code by wearing a ratty old jacket and tie with a pair of infrequently laundered Levi’s. And I despised and resisted the caste system that first-year students were obliged to endure with good humor.
EHS was not a military academy, but it borrowed a few traditions from Southern service academies. Like the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel, Episcopal imposed on first-year students the designation “rats.” Rats were expected to submit to a comparatively mild form of hazing. Mild or not, I resented the hell out of it. And my resentment, along with my affected disregard for rules and school authorities, soon earned me the distinction of “worst rat.”
My hazing increased to correspond to the disrespect with which I treated school customs, and my ever-lengthening catalog of demerits was addressed with ever-longer punishments. But neither my offenses nor their consequences were so serious that they caused a permanent estrangement to develop between me and the staid society that I imposed upon.
My initial entry into EHS society was rough. I was one of the small
er boys in my class, a fact that upperclassmen, annoyed by my obdurate refusal to show a rat’s humility, took to be further evidence of arrogance on my part, or arrogance that was all the more insufferable to them because neither social connections nor physical stature justified it. Despite my Confederate ancestors and my family’s Southern origins, my heritage was perceived as rootless and not particularly distinguished—a perception confirmed by my conspicuous lack of a Southern accent.
These circumstances might have made for a lonely three years, but I managed to make friends and find a place for myself without pretending to share in the culture from which EHS students were drawn. I was good at sports, and athletics were my passage through my difficult first weeks at the school. I played football in the fall. I wrestled in the winter. I played tennis in the spring. I wasn’t an exceptional athlete, but I was good enough to earn the respect of my teammates and coaches.
Eventually, I would use my reputation both as a credible athlete and as a troublemaker to earn a modest distinction as a leader of sorts at Episcopal—a leader of a few troublemakers, but a leader nonetheless. I was part of a small cadre of students who satisfied our juvenile sense of adventure by frequently sneaking off-campus at night to catch a bus for downtown Washington, and the bars and burlesque houses on 9th Street.
Our exploits there were tame compared to my more reckless conduct at the Naval Academy. But because we exaggerated them for the benefit of our rule-abiding classmates we were granted some prestige for our daring, and for the welcome fallacy that our excursions were somehow leading us to romantic opportunities that were only imagined in our all-male society.
The school hosted two dances a year, and for most students these were the only opportunities during the school year to enjoy the company of girls. To give the impression that you were regularly pursuing liaisons outside the school’s walls with women you were unlikely to meet at a school dance was a sure route to notoriety on campus. That the impression was, for the most part, contrived did not overly concern us. We deluded ourselves into believing the most salacious rumors about our behavior.
I had good friends at Episcopal. Memory often accords our high school years the distinction of being among the happiest, most relaxed of our lives. I remember Episcopal in that light, and the friendships I formed there make up the better parts of my remembrance. But there was one unexpected friendship that enriched my life at EHS beyond measure.
Were William B. Ravenel the only person I remember from high school, I would credit those days as among the best of my life. His influence over my life, while perhaps not apparent to most who have observed its progress, was more important and more benevolent than that of any other person save members of my family.
Mr. Ravenel headed the English department at EHS, and he coached the junior varsity football team, on which I played. He had been a star running back at Davidson College and had a master’s degree in English from Duke University. Stocky and compact, he still had the appearance and manner of an athlete but without the callowness that often marks men who live in the shadow of their long-ago successes on the playing field.
Like most men of his generation, Mr. Ravenel had known far greater danger than that posed by a tough defensive line. He had served in Patton’s tank corps during the Third Army’s aggressive advance across Europe and had survived its hard encounters with Hitler’s panzer divisions. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, the only master at the school who still served in the military.
With his craggy face and athlete’s build, he was a rugged-looking man. He seemed to his students to be as wise and capable as any man could expect to be. He loved English literature, and he taught us to love it as well. He had a way of communicating with his students that was uniquely effective and personal. He made us appreciate how profound were the emotions that animated the characters of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Macbeth and Hamlet, in his care, were as compelling and revealing to boys as they are to the most learned and insightful scholar. He wasn’t Mr. Chips, but he was as close to that ideal teacher as anyone is ever likely to find. No other master had half as much of our respect and affection. My class dedicated our senior yearbook to him. He was, simply, the best man at the school; one of the best men I have ever known.
Demerits required the offender to march ceaselessly around the long circle drive in the front of the school or to tend the yard of a master’s house. It was my good fortune to have received for my many transgressions assignment to work in Mr. Ravenel’s yard. Perhaps the school authorities knew they were doing me a favor—knew that Mr. Ravenel was best able to repair the all too evident flaws in my character.
I don’t know if it was their benevolence or providence that brought me to his attention. Neither do I understand why it was that Mr. Ravenel took such an interest in me, seeing in me something that few others did. But that he did take an interest in me was apparent to all. And as he personified the ideal of every student, Mr. Ravenel’s regard for me signaled my classmates that I had some merit despite the fact that they and I had to strain to see it.
I discussed all manner of subjects with him, from sports to the stories of Somerset Maugham, from his combat experiences to my future. He was one of the few people at school to whom I confided that I was bound for the Academy and a Navy career, and to whom I confessed my reservations about my destiny.
In the fall of my senior year, a member of the junior varsity football team had broken training and been found out. I cannot recall the exact nature of the offense, but it was serious enough to merit his expulsion from the team. Mr. Ravenel called a team meeting, and most of the players argued that the accused be dropped from the team. I stood and offered the only argument for a less severe punishment.
The student in question had, in fact, broken training. But unlike the rest of us, he had chosen at the start of the year not to sign a pledge promising to abide by the training rules faithfully. Had he signed the pledge, he would have been expelled from school, because violating the pledge constituted an honor offense. Had he signed it, I wouldn’t have defended him. But he had not. Moreover, he had not been caught breaking training, but had confessed the offense and expressed his remorse freely, without fear of discovery. I thought his behavior was no less honorable than that of a student who signed the pledge and adhered to its provisions.
So did Mr. Ravenel. But he kept his own counsel for most of our discussion, preferring, as was his way, to let his boys reason the thing out for ourselves.
At the start, most of my teammates wanted to hang the guy. But I argued that he had made a mistake that he sincerely regretted, and, uncoerced, had admitted the infraction. His behavior warranted no further disciplinary action. As I talked, I noticed Mr. Ravenel nodding his head. When some of the other guys started to come around to my point of view, Mr. Ravenel closed the discussion by voicing support for my judgment. The team then voted to drop the matter.
After the meeting broke up, Mr. Ravenel approached me and shook my hand. With relief evident in his voice, he told me we had done the right thing, and thanked me for my efforts. He allowed that before the meeting he had been anxious about its outcome. He had hoped the matter would be resolved as it had been, but was uncertain it would. Still, he had not wanted to be the one who argued for exoneration; he wanted the decision to be ours and not his. He said he was proud of me.
I have never forgotten the confidence his praise gave me. Nor have I ever forgotten the man who praised me. Many years later, when I came home from Vietnam, Mr. Ravenel was the only person outside of my family whom I wanted to see. I felt he was someone to whom I could explain what had happened to me, and who would understand. That is a high tribute to Mr. Ravenel. For I have never met a prisoner of war who felt he could explain the experience to anyone who had not shared it.
I regret that I was never able to pay him that tribute. Mr. Ravenel had died of a heart attack two years before my release. He lived for only fifty-three years. His early death was a great loss to his family, f
riends, and students, and to everyone who had been blessed with his company; a loss I found difficult to accept.
I was often accused of being an indifferent student, and given some of my grades, I can appreciate the charity in that remark. But I was not so much indifferent as selective. I liked English and history, and I usually did well in those classes. I was less interested and less successful in math and science. My grades at Episcopal were divided along those lines. Overall, my academic record there could be fairly described as undistinguished, but acceptable. I graduated a member in adequate if not good standing of the Class of 1954. One of my closest friends at the school, Rives Richey, said later, “If they’d rated everybody in the class for likely to succeed, I guarantee you he’d have been in the bottom ten, without any question.”
A few months prior to graduation, I had taken the Naval Academy entrance exams. I had applied myself, after having been enrolled by my father in a course at an Academy preparatory school, and did surprisingly well, even on the math exam. At graduation there was no longer even the slightest doubt that I would follow my father and grandfather to Annapolis. And on June 28, after a short vacation with some friends at Virginia Beach, my father drove me to the Academy to begin my plebe summer.
In those days an officer escorting his son to the Naval Academy was thought to be an event charged with symbolic importance, a solemn rite of passage. Yet I don’t remember it so. I had so long expected the day, so often envisioned the drive, that the actual event seemed more familiar than remarkable. I remember being nervous, and my father offering me typical words of encouragement. But nothing occurred in that one-hour trip that affected my long-held paradoxical image of the Academy, a place I belonged at but dreaded.
