RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
John McCain is being honored in Arizona before his body is flown to Washington, D.C., for a funeral ceremony on Saturday. Today, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will speak at a service in McCain's adopted state of Arizona, where he served for more than three decades. Will Stone of member station KJZZ has more.
WILL STONE, BYLINE: Hours before the ceremony began, American flags were springing up on the roadside, and Arizonans were paying tribute to a lost son. Max Fose, a former McCain staffer, was one of them.
MAX FOSE: He's an American hero. And so an American flag is fitting.
STONE: The flags lined the motorcade route from the Capitol building where McCain would lie in state for the day.
FOSE: He transformed American politics. He crossed party lines. He did what he thought was right even when it wasn't popular.
UNIDENTIFIED GUARD: (Unintelligible).
STONE: At the Capitol, servicemen and women awaited the senator's arrival on what would have been his 82nd birthday, and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey gave tribute.
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DOUG DUCEY: When John McCain called on us to serve a purpose greater than one's own self-interest, it wasn't a talking point designed to win the next election. It was how he had actually lived his life.
STONE: And this sense of McCain, as someone who believed entirely in America and its people, wasn't just shared by his close friends. Everyone, it seems, had a McCain story. John Ballenger and his wife Carol were among hundreds who came to the Capitol to pay their respects. Ballenger says he happened to run into the senator for the first time several years ago.
JOHN BALLENGER: I'm a Vietnam veteran. And I said, I've got two Purple Hearts, too. So he reached out, and he grabbed me. And he gave me a big bear hug. And he was whispered in my ear. He said, why didn't you come get me? I said, if I'd have known it, I'd have been there in a heartbeat, you know? And we really bonded right then and there.
STONE: Ballenger holds a photo of the two men embracing, like old friends. Sister Mary Nelle Gage came all the way from Denver.
MARY NELLE GAGE: For this, yeah.
STONE: She says McCain served more than just his home state.
GAGE: But the entire welfare of the whole country, having in mind what are best interests of all the people.
STONE: That's how Louise Benson remembers McCain. A former tribal chairwoman, Benson says the senator fought for her people throughout his career.
LOUISE BENSON: He was always there to welcome us - and just a very special man that, you know, we all got to know.
STONE: Benson calls him the last pioneer for the state of Arizona. Even those who never had a chance to meet him felt they knew him. Chasity Pullin grew up in Arizona. She barely remembers a time when he wasn't her senator.
CHASITY PULLIN: I feel like he's our local hometown hero. He was a real person, and he treated you like a real person.
STONE: Later today, McCain will leave the state he loves so much one last time and be brought to Washington, D.C. There, he will lie in state at the Capitol before his burial this weekend.
For NPR News, I'm Will Stone in Phoenix.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOKO KANNO'S "HUMAN STEP - ARAMAKI'S THEME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
