Arizona residents have lined up at the state capitol to pay their respects to Senator John McCain, who endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before becoming one of the most powerful US lawmakers and a two-time Republican presidential candidate.
The afternoon public viewing of his casket marked the start of five days of memorials in Phoenix and Washington for McCain, who died of brain cancer on Saturday at his ranch in Cornville, Arizona. He was 81.
"We are privileged as a state to have called him a fellow Arizonan," Governor Doug Ducey said on Twitter early Wednesday.
McCain parlayed his status as a Vietnam War hero into a decades-long political career. Over the past two years he has stood out as a key rival and critic of US President Donald Trump.
The bad blood between the two persisted after McCain's death, with his family asking Trump not to attend his funeral and the White House waffling on how to mourn a prominent fellow Republican.
"I want to pay my respects because he deserves it," said Linda Gordon, 58, who was the first of about a dozen people who joined the line early Wednesday for the public viewing.
"He represents what our country should be."
McCain was just the third person to lie in state in the Arizona statehouse rotunda over the past 40 years, organisers of the ceremony said. The others were state Senator Marilyn Jarrett in 2006 and Olympic gold medallist Jesse Owens of Tucson, in 1980.
Following a Thursday memorial, McCain's body will be flown to the nation's capital where he will lie in state on Friday at the US Capitol before a Saturday funeral at the Washington National Cathedral.
On Sunday, McCain is to be buried at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in a private ceremony.
