McCain baby started life knowing about only one kind of luck - bad

Senator, wife try to adopt girl from Bangladeshi orphanage

December 25, 1991

Steve Meissner

The Arizona Daily Star

Four-month-old Bridget McCain will celebrate her first Christmas in the lap of luxury.

She is the youngest child in the family of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. She is spending today in a comfortable cabin near Sedona, surrounded by four brothers   and sisters, lots of presents and a huge stocking that will be stuffed with trinkets.

It's quite a change from the way she started life - born in an orphanage in Bangladesh with a cleft palate, unwanted in a country where female babies - especially those with birth defects - are sometimes cast aside and left to die.

If the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka isn't the worst spot on Earth, it has to be close, says Cindy McCain.

"There's no place like Bangladesh," she says. "No place."

She would know. Although she's the wife of a senator and daughter of a millionaire, she's also the organizer of American Voluntary Medical Teams, an organization that sends doctors and nurses to the world's hellholes.

She's taken volunteer teams to Third World pockets of poverty in the Middle East, South America, Africa and Asia. Dhaka, she says, is the most heartbreaking spot she's seen.

"Some people say Calcutta is worse," says Cindy McCain. "I can't imagine how it could be."

Bridget was born in an orphanage run by Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her work with poor people in 90 countries and more than 400 cities - including Phoenix.

It was in India and Bangladesh where Mother Teresa started her missionary work, and that is where help - any help - is most needed.

"There are literally dead bodies lying in the street," says Cindy. "They send wagons around each day to collect the dead."

The worst part of Dhaka is the oldest part of the city, where the midday sun beats down on narrow streets that are choked with the destitute and the sick. "The smell is unbelievable," says Cindy.

That was the location of the orphanage that Cindy McCain visited because she was sure her medical team would find plenty to do.

She found a 20-by-20-foot room crammed with 160 newborn infants, "90 percent of them little girls."

The lucky girls end up in orphanages. The unlucky ones "are taken outside and are left to die," said Cindy.

That was Bridget's first break. Her mother, probably unwed, defied taboos by going to Mother Teresa's orphanage to give birth. She left her baby behind and allowed her to be baptized a Roman Catholic in a heavily Muslim country.

Bridget was born with a cleft palate, a defect that left a gaping cavity in the top of her mouth that reached to her nose.

She wasn't the sickest child in the hospital. One baby girl probably needed a liver transplant to survive, Cindy said.

But Bridget's problems could be cured with surgery. And she won Cindy's heart.

"I knew her medical problems were easily treatable, but she was female in a country where little girls aren't valued," said Cindy. "My heart just went out to her."

So Cindy went to work. She wanted to bring out two babies - Bridget, and another little girl named Leela, who had a heart defect that also could be treated through surgery.

Leela was destined to join the family of Wes Gullett, a member of McCain's Phoenix staff.

The process wasn't easy, even for the wife of a U.S. senator. It took all the persuasive powers that Cindy could muster.

"It kind of became a quest," she said. "I guess I just kind of went and stood in their face and wouldn't take no for an answer. Finally, about five days before I was supposed to leave, I got my permission."

Actually, she says the process might have been easier if she got her husband involved.

The senator didn't learn he was about to become a father again until his wife called from Bangkok, Thailand.

"I have to admit I wasn't crazy about the idea at first," the senator says. "But this was something Cindy wanted to do, but the whole family has taken to this little kid."

The McCains are hardly poverty-sticken. Besides a senator's salary, they have a share of the wealth accrued by Cindy's father, owner of a major beer and beverage distributorship in the Phoenix area.

But the McCains already have three young children of their own - Meghan, 7; Jack, 5; and Jimmy, 3. And there's Cari, 17, one of Cindy's distant relatives who needed a stable home and a place to live. She's been living with John and Cindy for the past several years, is a cheerleader and was her high school class vice president, and is now planning to attend Pepperdine University next year.

So John McCain admits to being a little overwhelmed when his wife called from Bangkok with news of a new arrival.

But baby Bridget quickly worked her magic. "She's a cute little thing," says John. "She has these big black eyes, and this thick cap of black hair. I'm really happy about the adoption."

"John was really a good sport about the whole thing," says Cindy. "I mean, he had no warning at all until I called him. All he said was, `We've already got four kids...."'

But he also understood, especially since they've had some scary times with their own kids.

All of Cindy's pregnancies were difficult, but Jimmy had some problems that lasted long after birth. He, too, had a heart problem.

"We thought he was going to die," says Cindy.

So John has accepted this new addition, along with all the problems of feeding and caring for a 4-month-old who faces serious medical problems.

Bridget recently underwent the first of many operations she will endure over the next few years. Dr. Stephen Beals of Phoenix Children's Hospital says Bridget's cleft palate is the worst he's seen. First the opening between her upper lip and nose must be closed. There's also need for extensive reconstructive surgery in her mouth.

And finally, when she's a little older, she'll have plastic surgery to minimize the scars.

Still, Bridget is a happy, generally healthy little girl who is enduring the surgery well. Now her new parents have to complete a lengthy adoption process, which includes fingerprints, background checks and questions - lots of questions.

Given John's status as a member of Congress, "I'm not sure he will pass," his wife said jokingly.

Actually, John is a little worried. He's afraid people will think he's trying to gain a little political capital as he faces what may be a tough re-election campaign in 1992.

That's why he's instructed his staff to remove all references to his children from his official biography.

Cindy, meanwhile, is getting ready to take a new team of medical volunteers to a new Third World source of misery. This time it's Vietnam, the country where her husband spent six years as a prisoner of war.

AMVET, her organization, has already made 80 overseas trips, relying on doctors, nurses and other volunteers who pay their way to work around the clock treating some of the world's most needy people.

If anything, the pace of those trips is likely to pick up. Cindy says she's negotiating with a Texas oil company that wants to donate two 727 jets. One will become an airborne hospital. The other will be used for spare parts.

And she's put her husband on notice that she might be coming home with another little Bridget some day.

"I'd do it again," she says. "Oh, for sure; I think I'll do it again."