By Jennifer Bjorhus

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Of the Perpich brothers, Tony was the quiet one — a dentist with a passion for carpentry and public service.

The former state senator formed one-third of a storied trio of siblings in Minnesota politics, the DFL clan from the Iron Range that included George Perpich and the late Rudy Perpich, Minnesota’s longest-serving governor. Tall and dark-haired, the brothers even looked alike and were frequently mistaken for one another, family said.

“The Perpich brothers were trailblazers in a great working-class push for political and economic power on the Range and beyond,” author Betty Wilson wrote in her book “Rudy! The People’s Governor.”

Tony Perpich succumbed to heart disease and died Saturday surrounded by family in his Shoreview home. He was 84.

It’s “a sad day for the Range,” said former state Sen. Doug Johnson from his home on Lake Vermilion.

Tony Perpich was born in 1932 in a hardscrabble mining community called Carson Lake that once existed near Hibbing, the second oldest of four boys born to Anton and Mary Perpich.

Tony Perpich built his dental practice in Virginia, but politics called. From 1967 to 1976 he served as a state senator and worked his way up to chairman of the powerful Senate Tax Committee. In contrast to the blood-sport style of Iron Range politics, Perpich was known as a calm and soft-spoken leader.