Former President Barack Obama attended Dan Rooney’s funeral in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.
Rooney, who was the owner of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers for many years, died Thursday at the age of 84 after suffering from illness.
Rooney supported Obama early on during his first presidential campaign, which prompted the former president to appoint Rooney as a U.S. ambassador to Ireland in 2009, a position Rooney held until 2012.
“Dan Rooney was a great friend of mine, but more importantly, he was a great friend to the people of Pittsburgh, a model citizen and someone who represented the United States with dignity and grace on the world stage,” Obama said in a statement, USA Today reported.
“I knew he’d do a wonderful job when I named him as our United States Ambassador to Ireland, but naturally, he surpassed my highest expectations, and I know the people of Ireland think fondly of him today,” the former POTUS continued.
At the funeral, Rooney’s son, Art Rooney II, said his father’s core values throughout his life were “faith, family and football,” according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“The greatest invention for my dad was the cell phone,” Art Rooney recalled. “He loved to talk to people on the phone and hated to miss a call.”
The funeral was held at Saint Paul Cathedral in Pittsburgh, where Cardinal Donald Wuerl gave the homily.
“One of the reasons there is so much affection for Dan Rooney is because he was a man of the people. He worked hard,” Wuerl said, the Post-Gazette repoorted.
“A good man, a good neighbor. He was a Pittsburgher,” Wuerl added.
The U.S. Embassy in Dublin as well as former Vice President Joe Biden, among many others, tweeted remembrances of Rooney.
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