KEY POINTS:
Cindy McCain, the wife of the Republican presidential candidate John McCain, describes herself as an only child. "I grew up with my dad, I'm an only child," she told a TV interviewer.
Now a half-sister has emerged to challenge that family history, claiming she and her offspring have been airbrushed out of the would-be first lady's family picture. "I'm upset," Kathleen Hensley Portalski said. "It makes me feel like a non-person."
Documents show she was born to Jim and Mary Jeanne Hensley on February 23, 1943. The still-married Mr Hensley was sent to West Virginia to recuperate from war wounds where he met Marguerite Smith. He married her in 1945, Cindy was born nine years later.
Kathleen saw her father and half-sister from time to time. But when Hensley died, it was to Cindy that he left his entire fortune. The will gave Kathleen just US$10,000.
The furore comes as Cindy McCain is trying to shed her distant image. Almost half the US electorate say they still do not know enough to have an opinion about her.
- INDEPENDENT
