Former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson passed away at the age of 93, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

After battling to recover from a broken hip in December, the former Republican senator, who played for Wyoming and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022, passed away early Friday.

“He was an uncommonly generous man. And I mean generous in an absolutely unconditional way. Giving of his time, giving of his energy—and he did it in politics and he did it in the family, forever,” Pete Simpson, his older brother, said in the statement.

Simpson, a moderate by today’s standards, served three terms as a senator from 1979 to 1997, during which time President Ronald Reagan revitalized the Republican Party.

Simpson was literally the tallest senator in history, standing at six feet seven, until Alabama senator Luther Strange, who is six feet nine, took office in 2017.

As a leading Senate leader at the time, Simpson was instrumental in uniting GOP senators behind the party’s legislative agenda. However, he was more well-known for having sometimes acerbic convictions about his own opinions.