Aug. 9 (UPI) — Actor Ben Jones, who played down-home mechanic Cooter Davenport on the hit television show The Dukes of Hazzard in the 1980s and later served in Congress, has died from a heart attack, his wife said Sunday. He was 84.

Jones, a native of Georgia, died at home from “a massive heart attack” while resting in his favorite chair “waiting for the Braves to come on and whoop the Yankees,” wife Alma Viator wrote in a Facebook post.

Jones landed the role of the gruff Cooter in 1979 after working with show creator Gy Waldron four years earlier on the movie Moonrunners, which was similarly a comedy about bootleggers in the U.S. South.

On Dukes, he played the owner of Cooter’s Garage — a key locale in fictitious Hazzard County, Ga. — where he often worked on the General Lee, a restored 1969 Dodge Charger driven by the show’s heroes, Bo Duke and Luke Duke, as they went up against local bad guys.

The Dukes of Hazzard ran for seven seasons from January 1979 to February 1985 and was one of the biggest hits of the ’80s.

Jones was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1988, representing Georgia’s Fourth Congressional District, and was re-elected to another two-year term in 1990.

During his political campaigns, it was revealed he had overcome a drinking problem before launching his long stint on Dukes.

“Ben had the most amazing rich full life,” Viator wrote in her post about her husband. “He loved and was loved by so many. He will be missed. I loved him so so much.”