Former Oregon Congressman Bob Smith during a press conference in Medford where he announced another candidacy for Congress in the 2nd District.

SALEM — Former U.S. Rep. Bob Smith, who represented Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District for more than a decade, died in Medford on Monday, Sept. 21. He was 89.

Smith served from 1983 to 1995 as the U.S. representative for the district covering Central, Eastern and a part of Southern Oregon. He retired in 1995 but ran again in 1996 after his successor, Wes Cooley, admitted to lying about his military service record.

Smith’s cause of death was not immediately released, and family could not be immediately reached.

Rep. Greg Walden, a fellow Republican who succeeded Smith as the congressman for Oregon’s 2nd District, said he remembered meeting Smith for the first time when he was 13 and visiting the Oregon Capitol.

“Chairman Robert ‘Bob’ Freeman Smith was a one-of-a-kind rancher, legislator and advocate for the Eastern Oregon way of life,” Walden said in a written statement.