VietPress USA (Apr. 23, 2020): According to the Boston Globe, Donald Reed Herring, the oldest brother of Senator Elizabeth Warren, died on Tuesday night in Norman, Okla., about three weeks after testing positive for the coronavirus. 

Herring, a 20-year veteran of the US Air Force, was 86. 

Warren, who has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s halting response to the pandemic for months, has not previously revealed that her family was waging its own personal battle against the virus. She confirmed his death in a statement provided to the Globe and said the cause was the coronavirus.

“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. “I will miss my brother.”

Herring was born in 1933 and attended the University of Oklahoma, but did not graduate, before enlisting in the Air Force, where he flew B-47 and B-52 bombers. He flew 288 combat missions in Vietnam, eventually becoming a B-52 squadron pilot and a squadron aircraft commander. He earned numerous decorations before retiring in 1973 as a lieutenant colonel and starting an auto-detailing business. In her statement, Warren described Herring as a natural leader with a quick, crooked smile.

Known as Don Reed, Herring was the oldest of Warren’s three brothers, and he leaves the other two, John Herring and David Herring. The trio became a silent fixture of their sister’s presidential campaign, because she spoke often of them as a link to her upbringing in a more conservative world, highlighting their military service and the fact that two of them — Don Reed and David — were Republicans who agreed with her on some fundamentals. They never spoke to the press, but all three appeared in video footage used by her campaign.

Read more from GMA on Yahoo News at:

https://news.yahoo.com/sen-elizabeth-warren-tweets-her-oldest-brother-died-150500126--abc-news-topstories.html

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The eldest of former Democratic presidential contender and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's three older brothers, Don Reed, died on Tuesday night from the coronavirus in Norman, Oklahoma, about three weeks after testing positive. He was 86.

"My oldest brother, Don Reed, died from coronavirus on Tuesday evening. He joined the Air Force at 19 and spent his career in the military, including five and a half years off and on in combat in Vietnam. He was charming and funny, a natural leader," she wrote in a series of tweets and confirmed in a statement on Thursday.

"What made him extra special was his smile—quick and crooked, it always seemed to generate its own light, one that lit up everyone around him," she continued."

"I’m grateful to the nurses and frontline staff who took care of him, but it’s hard to know that there was no family to hold his hand or to say “I love you” one more time—and no funeral for those of us who loved him to hold each other close. I'll miss you dearly my brother."

Warren often spoke proudly of her brothers on the campaign trail; they were a key part of her stump speech: only one is a Democrat.

"Do the math," she often said - the gist being that despite their differences, they still loved each other.

Reed was a U.S. Air Force veteran (all three served in the military, Warren often liked to say) and one of the two Republicans. Though he and his siblings only appeared once on the trail with her when she was in Oklahoma, they never spoke to the press; but did appear in a campaign video for their little sister.

Warren has been passionately outspoken about the pandemic's grip on the nation and world; and a vocal critic of the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 crisis; releasing plans to combat its economic impact.

However, she never publicly mentioned that her family was in its own, private fight against the virus, for weeks, even as she herself remains committed to the public fight.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's oldest brother died from COVID-19 complications originally appeared on abcnews.go.com