March 21, 2022 — Don Young, the irascible riverboat captain who did not so much represent Alaska as personify it for half a century in Congress, died Friday as he was flying home to Alaska for yet another political campaign.
Young was 88, the oldest and longest-serving member of the current Congress. In serving the 49th state for 49 years, he had become the longest-serving Republican congressman in history.
No cause of death has yet been given. The congressman lost consciousness on a flight from Los Angeles to Seattle and could not be revived. His wife, Anne, was traveling with him.
Young was first elected to Alaska’s only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election in March 1973. Four months earlier, he had lost the regular election to Democrat Nick Begich, the incumbent congressman who had disappeared on a campaign flight but would not be declared dead until December.
Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News