MINNEAPOLIS _ Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan's brother has died after contracting COVID-19.
The lieutenant governor said her brother Ron, who lived in Tennessee, was diagnosed with cancer several weeks ago and his immune system was compromised when he got the coronavirus.
"To many, he'll be a statistic: Tennessee's second COVID-related death. But to me, I'll remember a loving, older brother, uncle, father, and husband," Flanagan wrote in an Instagram post Sunday.
She urged people to stay home to protect people like her brother.
"If you feel fine, that's great. But please consider the possibility that you're carrying the virus and don't know it, and then you walk past the next Ron, my big brother, in public," she wrote. "COVID-19 now has a personal connection to me. Please do all you can to prevent one for you."
Flanagan described her brother as a "tough-as-nails" Marine who was a big teddy bear on in the inside. Their politics did not match at all, the Democratic lieutenant governor said, and that was a source of constant jokes.
Her brother's death follows that of her father, about two months ago.
