Geoff Braybrooke, former long-serving Labour MP for Napier, died on Saturday.
Mr Braybrooke had been in a Palmerston North hospice following a lengthy illness.
Former MP for Hawkes Bay Dr Bill Sutton said Mr Braybrooke was Napier's most popular MP in the past half-century and his death would be noted with sadness by the thousands of Napier residents who remembered his long fight to save Napier Hospital.
