'Alaskan Bush People' Patriarch Billy Brown Has Died — What Happened?

Fans of Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People are offering their support to the Brown family as they mourn the loss of their patriarch, Billy Brown. When the docudrama-style show started airing in 2014, it didn’t take long for people to admire Billy for his straight-shooting style and the way he took care of his family in the bush and away from modern society.

Now that he has died, fans of the show are sharing touching tributes to the Brown family patriarch, as well as looking for additional details about what happened to him. Here’s what we know.

Those who have followed the show and kept tabs on the Brown family may already know that Billy had been dealing with some major health issues over the past few years. He was hospitalized briefly in October of 2018 with an upper respiratory infection. At the time, his son Bear told his followers that his dad was “in really bad shape,” health-wise.

Billy also had a history of seizures, which he had experienced with some frequency ever since he was in a coma in 2008. In 2015, he spoke to Radar Online about his experience of being in a coma, saying: "I was simply fine one day. I started that day thinking I was getting sick, but I wasn’t sick. And then I simply just fell over one day.”

“Everything shut down: my kidneys, my lungs. My brain swelled to like 75 percent. They literally thought that I would be child-like if I did wake up. It was [a] really bad thing that we’ve been fighting for almost 10 years now.” Although Billy woke up from the coma and was able to make great leaps toward recovery, it’s clear that the experience negatively impacted his health for the rest of his life.

In addition to his own health issues, Billy spent several years caring for his wife Ami after she was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer. In 2017, some fans spotted Billy at a mall and noticed he had lost quite a bit of weight, perhaps due to the stress of helping take care of Ami. Happily, Ami has since been declared cancer-free and has been in remission for the past few years.

Billy died on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021, at the age of 68. According to a statement from his son Bear, his death was related to the seizures he had been suffering from for years. “We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved patriarch Billy Brown passed away last night after suffering from a seizure," Bear wrote on his private Instagram account (via People). "He was our best friend — a wonderful and loving dad, granddad and husband and he will be dearly missed."

"He lived his life on his terms, off the grid and off the land and taught us to live like that as well. We plan to honor his legacy going forward, and to continue with his dream. We ask for privacy and prayers during this painful time. God Bless Everyone!"

Our thoughts are with the Brown family and their friends during this difficult time.