Everett Alvarez Jr. next week finally will see his friend John McCain become the Republican nominee for president, casting all Maryland’s votes as honorary chairman of the state delegation to the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn.

But he easily recalls the first time he ever saw McCain decades ago, on a day near the end of their long captivity in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp — eight years for Alvarez, the first American shot down, and five years for McCain. He recounted the tale with humor last month at a Republican picnic in Davidsonville.

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