Robert Dole’s passing has sent the Capitol Hill into mourning on Sunday as multiple lawmakers and executives remember the 98-year-old political and defense veteran. United States President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and minority counterpart Mitch McConnell were some who remembered the politician. 

According to ABC News, the star-spangled banner at the United States Capitol has been put in a half-mast position to honour the memory of Dole, who was nicknamed Bob Dole.

United States President Joe Biden, in a White House statement on Sunday, said, “Bob Dole was a man to be admired by Americans. He had an unerring sense of integrity and honor. May God bless him, and may our nation draw upon his legacy of decency, dignity, good humor, and patriotism for all time.”

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Further remembering his time as a lawmaker in the upper legislative house of the country, Biden wrote, “Like all true friendships, regardless of how much time has passed, we picked up right where we left off, as though it were only yesterday that we were sharing a laugh in the Senate dining room or debating the great issues of the day.”

Just days after Dole announced his dire cancer diagnosis, President Joe Biden visited him at his home to wish him well. The White House said the two were close friends from their days in the Senate, according to reports from Associated Press. 

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who passed on the baton of GOP’s upper house leadership from Dole, wrote, “Whatever their politics, anyone who saw Bob Dole in action had to admire his character and his profound patriotism.

He added, “Those of us who were lucky to know Bob well ourselves admired him even more. A bright light of patriotic good cheer burned all the way from Bob’s teenage combat heroics through his whole career in Washington through the years since. It still shone brightly, undimmed, to his last days.”

Former President Barack Obama wrote, “Senator Bob Dole was a war hero, a political leader, and a statesman—with a career and demeanor harkening back to a day when members of the Greatest Generation abided by a certain code, putting country over party. Our thoughts are with Elizabeth and the Dole family.”