COVID-19

Donald Reed Herring, a Vietnam veteran and the oldest brother to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, died on Tuesday from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, the former 2020 presidential candidate announced. "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," the senator wrote on Twitter. "He was charming and funny, a natural leader." Like many families who have had loved ones die during this pandemic, Warren has had to grieve in isolation in order to continue social distancing. “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,” she wrote. “ I will miss my brother.” According to the Boston Globe, Herring pulled out of his studies at the University of Oklahoma to enlist in the Air Force. He flew 288 combat missions during the Vietnam War and earned the rank of squadron aircraft commander. He retired from the military in 1973 as a lieutenant colonel before he began an auto-detailing company. Herring and his two younger brothers, John and David, still lived in Warren's native Oklahoma, and the trio appeared in an ad last year for the senator's unsuccessful presidential campaign.