Sen. Robert Byrd, the longest serving US senator in American history, died at 3 a.m. Monday morning, according to information posted on his congressional website.
“The family of US Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., tearfully announces the passing of the longest serving member of Congress in U.S. history,” reads Byrd’s site. “Byrd died peacefully at approximately 3 a.m. at Inova Fairfax Hospital.”
The 92-year-old Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia, was initially hospitalized from what was thought to be heat exhaustion and dehydration.
However, “other conditions have developed, which has resulted in his condition being described as ’serious,'” according to a statement obtained by the West Virginia newspaper The Charleston Gazette on Sunday.
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin released a statement on Sunday saying that “both Gayle and I are thinking about and praying for Sen. Byrd and his family.”
According to the Gazette, Byrd’s health became increasingly worse. He was hospitalized several times in 2008 and had a staph infection in 2009, prompting him to stay in the hospital for six weeks. His wife passed away in 2006 at the age of 88.
Sen. Byrd initially joined the US House of Representatives in 1953, before getting elected to the US Senate in 1959, where he had continued serving to the present.
