(CNN)Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced Thursday her oldest brother Donald Reed Herring died after testing positive for coronavirus.
"My oldest brother, Don Reed, died from the coronavirus on Tuesday evening," Warren said in a statement to CNN and in a series of tweets. "He was charming and funny, a natural leader. What made him extra special was his smile. He had a quick, crooked smile that seemed to generate its own light -- and to light up everyone around him.

Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren

Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren, a US senator from Massachusetts, speaks during a campaign event in March 2019.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren is held by her father, Donald Herring, soon after she was born in Oklahoma City in 1949. "My daddy worked hard his whole life," Warren said when she posted this picture to Facebook on Father's Day 2014. "He sold fencing and carpeting, and ended up as a maintenance man. He and my mother never had much, but he said that his life was a success because his four kids had more opportunities than he had."
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
A young Warren sits with her mother, Pauline. "When I was 12, my daddy had a heart attack," Warren wrote on Facebook in 2017. "All three of my brothers were off in the military, and Daddy was out of work for a long time. We lost our family station wagon, and we were about an inch away from losing our home. One day, I walked into my mother's room and found her crying. She said, 'We are not going to lose this house.' She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and pulled on her best dress -- the one she wore to funerals and graduations. At 50 years old, she walked down the street and got her first paying job: answering the phones at Sears. That minimum wage job saved our home, and my mother saved our family."
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren poses for a Christmas photo with her brother John. All three of her brothers served in the military.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
In the late 1960s, Warren attended George Washington University on a debate scholarship. She dropped out after two years to get married, but she graduated from the University of Houston in 1970.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren holds her newborn daughter, Amelia, in 1971. She and her first husband, Jim Warren, had two children before divorcing in 1980.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren with her three brothers -- Don, John and David -- in 1980. After graduating from college, Warren worked as a speech pathologist at a New Jersey elementary school. She then got a law degree and taught at the Rutgers School of Law before becoming a professor at the University of Houston Law Center. She's also been a professor at the University of Texas Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Harvard Law School.
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Warren and her second husband, Bruce Mann. She posted this old photo to Facebook in 2016 along with a story about how she proposed to him. They were married in 1980.
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Warren teaches at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in the early 1990s.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
US Sen. Barack Obama listens to Warren speak during a roundtable discussion about predatory lending in 2008. Warren is an expert on bankruptcy law and was an adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in the 1990s. In 1989, Warren co-authored the book "As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America."
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren takes her seat to testify before the House Budget Committee in 2009. The United States was battling a recession at the time, and Warren had been appointed to a congressional oversight panel overseeing the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner listen to President Barack Obama at the White House in September 2010. Obama was appointing Warren to be his assistant and special adviser to the Treasury Secretary in order to launch the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren had long called for a federal agency designed to protect consumers from fraudulent or misleading financial products.
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Warren and US Sen. Scott Brown, right, make fun of each other during an annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast in Boston. Warren announced in 2011 that she would be challenging Brown for his Senate seat..
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Warren speaks to constituents at a campaign event in Scituate, Massachusetts, in May 2012.
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Warren takes a morning walk with her dog Otis on the Harvard University Business School campus in May 2012.
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Warren stands with family members after giving a speech in Springfield, Massachusetts, in June 2012. Warren has several grandchildren.
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President Barack Obama greets Warren at a fundraiser in Boston in June 2012.
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Warren speaks at the Democratic National Convention in September 2012.
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Warren greets supporters during a campaign event at Boston University.
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Warren takes the stage after defeating Brown for a Senate seat in November 2012.
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Warren listens during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in May 2013.
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Warren meets with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in April 2016.
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Warren campaigns with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in June 2016.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, questions Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf in September 2016. Warren unleashed a verbal barrage at Stumpf, calling the embattled bank boss "gutless" and demanding he step down. Her diatribe was the most forceful condemnation yet of Wells Fargo, who fired more than 5,000 employees over the years for creating fake accounts without customer knowledge. The employees created the fraudulent accounts to meet bank quotas and were allegedly threatened with firing if they didn't comply.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
In January 2017, Warren posted this photo of her and Obama together. Obama was leaving after two terms as President.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren holds a transcript of her speech in the Senate Chamber after she was cut off during the debate over Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions in February 2017. In an extremely rare rebuke, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell silenced Warren after he determined that she violated a Senate rule against impugning another senator. Warren was reading from a 1986 letter in which Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., was critical of Sessions -- who at the time was a nominee to be a federal judge.
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Warren and other Democrats listen as President Donald Trump speaks to a joint session of Congress in February 2017.
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US Sen. Bob Corker talks with Warren during a Senate committee hearing in June 2017.
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Warren attends a confirmation hearing for Jerome Powell, who was nominated to be chairman of the Federal Reserve, in November 2017. It was a day after President Donald Trump referenced Warren as "Pocahontas" during an event honoring Navajo code talkers. Conservatives have long criticized Warren for claiming that she is part Native American, and the senator's heritage became an issue during her Senate campaigns. Trump seized on the attacks and has regularly mocked Warren by calling her "Pocahontas." In October 2018, Warren released results of a DNA test showing she has distant Native American ancestry. The DNA results claimed "strong evidence" of Native American ancestry "6-10 generations ago." But it only served to intensify the criticism given her distant ties.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren runs down Boston's Clarendon Street waving to crowds during the annual Boston Pride Parade in June 2018.
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Warren and US Sen. Susan Collins ride the Senate subway in June 2018.
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Warren is seen in the sunglasses of Arian Rustemi during a rally in Boston in June 2018. Warren was calling for the swift reunification of children and parents who had been separated at the US-Mexico border.
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Warren helps Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams make calls to voters in October 2018.
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A Warren figurine sits in the back pocket of Mary Jo Kane during a town-hall event in Boston in October 2018.
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Warren was re-elected in 2018. Here, she is joined by her husband, Bruce Mann, as Vice President Mike Pence re-enacts her swearing-in.
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Warren, her husband and dog Bailey attend an event in Manchester, New Hampshire, in January 2019. Warren had recently announced that she was forming an exploratory committee for the 2020 presidential race.
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Warren speaks in Columbia, South Carolina, in January 2019.
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Warren looks down at the crowd in Lawrence, Massachusetts, before formally announcing her presidential bid in February 2019.
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Warren answers questions at a town-hall event in Jackson, Mississippi, in March 2019.
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Warren makes a pinky promise with 8-year-old Sydney Hansen during a campaign stop in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in July 2019.
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US Sen. Bernie Sanders grabs Warren's hand during the CNN Democratic debates in July 2019. Sanders and Warren, two of the most progressive candidates in the field, were targeted early in their debate by their more moderate counterparts.
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Warren speaks at her Super Tuesday rally in Detroit in March 2020.
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Warren acknowledges supporters as she arrives to speak to the media outside her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in March 2020. She had just dropped out of the presidential race.
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren appears on "Saturday Night Live" with actress Kate McKinnon, playing Warren, in March 2020. "I wanted to put on my favorite outfit to thank you for all you've done in your lifetime," McKinnon said. "I'm not dead," Warren responded. "I'm just in the Senate." The two then said the show's famous catchphrase, "Live ... from New York! It's Saturday night!"
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Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren
Warren asks questions during a Senate committee hearing in June 2020. She was appearing via video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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She added: "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."
The Boston Globe first reported the story.
Warren has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration's handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, but had not publicly shared until Thursday that her brother was sick with the virus.
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Warren said Herring joined the Air Force at 19, "spent his career in the military, including five and a half years off and on in combat in Vietnam."
When she was running for president, Warren spoke often of her brothers. Her three older brothers were featured in a campaign ad that ran earlier this year when she was still seeking the Democratic nomination. Two of her brothers attended a campaign rally in her hometown of Oklahoma City, but Herring was not in attendance.