Bob Dole, ex-Kansas senator, Senate Republican leader and presidential nominee, dies at 98

Bob Dole, the one-time Kansas basketball player who went on to become a war hero and then the Republican leader in the Senate and his party’s nominee for president of the United States, died at the age of 98, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and his family said Sunday.

Mr. Dole, who in February announced he was battling Stage 4 lung cancer, had been ailing for some time, but his longevity and accomplished career were near miracles given the grievous wounds he suffered on a northern Italian hillside in April 1945.

His history as a veteran defined his later years, as Mr. Dole became a spokesman and figurehead of ̈the greatest generation,̈ and, despite his health, greeting untold hundreds of veterans at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

“I think more than anything he just wanted to make them feel special,” said Tim Holbert, the executive director of the American Veterans Center. “That will be my lasting memory of Bob Dole — him sitting there on a Saturday, not with the cameras or the media around, just him out there on a Saturday in Washington — greeting veterans, every one, as they came off the buses.”

The Honor Flight Network, which arranges and finances trips for veterans of all wars to come to the capital, had a long partnership with Mr. Dole and said his presence and image will be impossible to replicate.

“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him,” said Honor Flight President David Nichols. “There were a lot of people involved in getting things like Honor Flight, and even the monument itself wouldn’t exist without his dedication, he was the point man.”

Mr. Dole would famously shrug off Honor Flight officials and medical advisers who urged him to cut short his hours greeting veterans, insisting he remain until the last busload that day had arrived.