Donald Reed Herring, the eldest brother of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., died earlier this week from the coronavirus while in intensive care at Norman Regional Hospital in Norman, Oklahoma, The Boston Globe reports.
“I’m grateful to the nurses and other front-line staff who took care of my brother, but it is hard to know that there was no family to hold his hand or to say ‘I love you’ one more time. And now there’s no funeral for those of us who loved him to hold each other close,” Warren said in a statement. “I will miss my brother.”
Herring, 86, was a former Air Force pilot, having flown 288 combat missions in Vietnam as a B-47 pilot, a B-52 squadron pilot, and a squadron aircraft commander. He retired in 1973 as a lieutenant colonel and went on to start an auto-detailing business.
Warren wrote in her autobiography that her first memory of Herring, who was 16 years older, was of him leaving to join the Air Force when he was 19.
“My first memory of Don Reed was when he left for the service and then of his wedding,” she wrote. “He was adventurous and dashing, and his very existence was like a distant light.”
Herring lived with his wife, Judith Anne Hart, in Newcastle, Oklahoma, and had previously been treated for cancer several years ago and was recently hospitalized for pneumonia.
Warren frequently mentioned Herring and her other two brothers during her presidential campaign, the three of them appearing in video footage together. Herring is survived by his siblings, his wife, and his two sons, John and Jeffrey.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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