Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Older Brother, Donald Reed, Dies at 86 Following Coronavirus Complications

Donald Reed Herring, the oldest brother of former former Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, has died after contracting the coronavirus. Herring, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, passed away Tuesday evening, just three weeks after testing positive for the virus, Warren announced. He was 86.

Herring, known as Don Reed, was hospitalized in February with pneumonia, his family confirmed to the Boston Globe. He later moved to a rehabilitation center, which had active coronavirus cases. He was tested for the virus in early April and received positive results just a day later, though he did not show symptoms for another 11 days. On April 15, he was moved to intensive care at Norman Regional Hospital, where he died six days later.

“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 to the outlet. “I will miss my brother.”

Born in 1933, Herring was the oldest of Warren’s three brothers. He was born in 1933 and attended the the University of Oklahoma, but did not graduate, before enlisting in the Air Force. Throughout his career, he flew 288 combat missions in Vietnam, becoming a B-52 squadron pilot and a squadron aircraft commander and earning a number of decorations. He in 1973 as a lieutenant colonel and went on to start an auto-detailing business.