BOSTON, United States (AP) — The oldest brother of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Donald Reed Herring, has died from the novel coronavirus, the Massachusetts senator said yesterday.

The former Democratic presidential candidate said her brother died Tuesday evening. He spent his career in the military after joining the US Air Force at the age of 19 and was “charming and funny, a natural leader”, Warren tweeted.

“I’m grateful to the nurses and front-line 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,” she said.

The Boston Globe reported that Herring, 86, died in Norman, Oklahoma, about three weeks after testing positive for the virus.

Herring flew B-47 and B-52 bombers for the Air Force, and flew 288 combat missions in Vietnam, the newspaper reported. He served as a B-52 squadron pilot and a squadron aircraft commander before retiring in 1973 as a lieutenant colonel.

“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,” Warren said.