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The
88-year-old congressman died while traveling home to Alaska, his
office said.
"Don Young's legacy as a fighter for the state will live on, as
will his fundamental goodness and honor. We will miss him
dearly," the statement said.
His office did not give the cause of death. The Anchorage Daily
News reported that Young lost consciousness on a flight from Los
Angeles to Seattle and could not be resuscitated. The newspaper
report cited Jack Ferguson, who had served as Young's chief of
staff.
Young was Alaska's only member in the House of Representatives.
The longest-serving member of the current U.S. Congress,
according to his website, he represented Alaska for 25 terms and
last year he filed to enter this November's election.
"I'm incredibly saddened to hear of the passing of Don Young,"
U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican in the
House, said in a statement.
"He was a passionate champion of his home state of Alaska, but
he was also a mentor who, as the Dean of the House, had more
institutional knowledge of Congress than anyone I know," Scalise
said.
U.S. Representative Dean Phillips, a Democrat from Minnesota,
said on Twitter: "His fiercely independent voice for Alaska and
one of a kind wit and character will be missed."
Young was born in California in 1933 and moved to Alaska in
1959, shortly after statehood.
In Congress, he was known for directing billions of dollars of
federal money to Alaska, the largest state in the country but
with one of the smallest populations.
In late 2020, Young was diagnosed with COVID-19 after he had
earlier ridiculed the disease as a "beer virus."
(Reporting by Eric Beech, Chris Gallagher and Yereth Rosen;
Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Kenneth Maxwell)
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