In this Saturday, June 13, 2009 photo, University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer walks last, according to tradition, in the procession entering McArthur Court where he presided over his final commencement as president of the university. The widely respected leader in Oregon politics and academics, died Monday, March 9, 2015 at 74. A statement from his family says Frohnmayer died after “a quiet battle” for five years against prostate cancer.

Tributes are being paid to Dave Frohnmayer, former president of the University of Oregon and former Oregon attorney general, who died Monday at the age of 74.

“He was a lawyer’s lawyer,” said former Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who like Frohnmayer was attorney general and also began in elective politics as a state representative from Lane County.

“There are few times when people come into our lives who have as much talent and character who have such an effect on us — and he was one of those people.”

Gov. Kate Brown, also a lawyer, issued this statement Tuesday:

“I am heartbroken at the loss of my wonderful and brilliant friend Dave Frohnmayer. His deep love of Oregon is reflected in a lifetime of leadership and public service. My thoughts and prayers go out to Lynn and the Frohnmayer family at this difficult time.”

Plans for a memorial service will be announced.

A Frohnmayer family spokeswoman said he died in his sleep Monday, and he had dealt with prostate cancer for more than five years.

“We are devastated by his passing but we are grateful that his passing was peaceful,” says the statement released Tuesday by Marla Rae, who worked for Frohnmayer and two of his successors as attorney general.

Frohnmayer joined the law firm of Harrang Long Gary Rudnick in 2009 upon his retirement after 15 years as University of Oregon president.

Stan Long was deputy attorney general under Frohnmayer – the No. 2 position in the Oregon Department of Justice – and Bill Gary was solicitor general, the official who represents Oregon in federal and state appellate courts.

The current attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, was a law student when Dave Frohnmayer taught at the University of Oregon law school in the 1970s.

“Dave made such a tremendous impact on the attorney general’s office that all of us who have followed him have tried to fill his shoes,” Kulongoski said.

Frohnmayer was born July 9, 1940, in Medford. His father was Otto Frohnmayer, a prominent lawyer who emigrated from Germany and graduated in 1929 from the University of Oregon law school, which his son would one day lead as its dean. His mother was MarAbel Frohnmayer, a patron of the arts whose name is on the University of Oregon music building.

Otto Frohnmayer died in 2000, and MarAbel Frohnmayer in 2003.

After high school graduation in 1958, Dave Frohnmayer attended Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1962 and went on to a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University. He earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkley in 1967.

He was a special assistant to Elliot Richardson, then the U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare, before he returned to Oregon in 1971.

For a decade, he taught at the law school, and as a volunteer, he was an advocate for Oregon’s open meetings and public records laws, which lawmakers passed in 1973.

Frohnmayer won an Oregon House seat in 1974, the same year Kulongoski, also a lawyer, was elected from a neighboring district in Lane County. Frohnmayer was a Republican, Kulongoski a Democrat.

Frohnmayer was elected attorney general in 1980, defeating Democrat Harl Haas, then the Multnomah County district attorney. He was re-elected in 1984 and 1988, the second time with both Republican and Democratic nominations.

He ran for governor in 1990, but lost to Democrat Barbara Roberts in a race where an independent anti-abortion candidate drew a modern-day record 13 percent of the votes. Roberts became Oregon’s first female governor.

Frohnmayer resigned at the end of 1991, with a year left in his third term as attorney general, to become dean of the University of Oregon law school.

In mid-1994, he was chosen as the 15th president of the university. He retired in 2009.

“It was a learning process for him,” said Kulongoski, who was governor during many of Frohnmayer’s later years in that job. “As you watched, he got better and better as time went on in how to lead a large institution.”

Frohnmayer is survived by his wife, Lynn; sons Mark and Jonathan, and daughter Amy. Also among survivors are a brother, John, who lives in Corvallis and is a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and a sister, Mira. Another brother, Philip, died in 2013.

Two of his other daughters have died, both of Fanconi anemia, a rare blood disease. Katie died at age 12 in 1991, and Kirsten at age 24 in 1997.

In 1989 he and his wife founded the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund to promote the search for a cure.

The family statement issued Tuesday notes that Frohnmayer kept his own health problems private:

“Much of Dave’s life was devoted to fighting devastating health crises that enveloped his family. These battles were complicated by the intense public attention that inevitably accompanied his lifelong commitment to public service.  He was adamant that his own health issues would remain private.

“Except for the immediate family and Dave’s closest friends, he was able to accomplish this and continue a full public schedule to the end.”