Lawyer Darrell Jordan, who garnered hundreds of headlines dating back to his days as an Dallas County prosecutor in the mid-1960s, died Wednesday at the age of 80. The cause of death was not immediately available Friday.

Jordan will be remembered as many things, among them: a basketball player at the University of Texas, assistant district attorney under Henry Wade, president of the State Bar of Texas, adviser to countless young attorneys, the dreamer who believed it was possible to dome the Cotton Bowl and the man who lost the 1995 mayor's race to Ron Kirk.

"What a great man," Kirk said Friday of the rival with whom he was close friends. "A great attorney and a good, decent human being. And he was a great mentor to a lot of us young lawyers, who taught us how to conduct ourselves, how to be a good lawyer, how to be a good citizen."

Darrell Jordan, left, served as Dallas City Council member Tennell Atkins' attorney during the council member's tenure on the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund board. (Mona Reeder / Staff Photographer)

Jordan, in recent years a partner at Diamond McCarthy, was born in McAllen on June 28, 1938, the oldest of five children. In 1944 his father Al opened the first YMCA in the Rio Grande Valley, and, over protestations of the white residents, refused to turn away anyone because of their skin color. His mother Dorothy, who held a degree in child education, taught kindergarten in the family's home for years.

Jordan spent summers picking onions, shilling neon signs and working highway construction to put himself through law school.

He attended UT, where he was freshman president and a basketball player. There, he met Austin-native Ann McNamara on a blind date. They married in December 1962, had three children, and remained married until Ann's death in December 2014.

The couple came to Dallas so Darrell could attend the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, which years later gave him its Distinguished Alumni Award. After graduation in 1964 he worked briefly at Dallas City Hall as an assistant city attorney before he went to work for Wade as a prosecutor. Jordan's name first appeared in The Dallas Morning News in August 1966, after he helped convict a man who "took advantage of uneducated persons seeking inexpensive liability coverage."

Jordan spent two years under Wade, who called him "reverend."

Darrell Jordan, left, managing partner of Godwin Gruber and former president of the Cotton Bowl Dome Foundation, and Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, right, share a good laugh during a panel discussion on the future of the Cotton Bowl and the annual Texas-OU game in October 2005 (Kye R. Lee / Staff photographer)

"Darrell not only understood the difference between right and wrong, but he instinctively understood the ethical basis of the law," his friend and Dallas attorney Jim Ramsey wrote in The News in 1995. "Darrell was, and is, committed to justice and public service."

In 1966, Jordan left the DA's office to form his own three-man law firm, which in 1982 merged with Hughes & Luce. There he became a senior partner and the firm's business trial specialist. He once told The News his favorite legal dust-up involved a fight between ice cream makers Haagen-Dazs and Baskin-Robbins over exclusive labeling rights to the "pralines and cream" flavor.

If nothing else, said Jordan, who represented Haagen-Dazs and won, "We all ate a lot of ice cream."

He was elected head of the State Bar of Texas in 1988, with an overwhelming majority; a year later he helped dispatch attorneys to south Texas, at the request of federal authorities, to provide free legal assistance for Central Americans seeking political asylum in the U.S.

In ensuing years Jordan accrued myriad accolades and honors. He was so well-regarded by his peers that in its obituary posted Wednesday, the Texas Lawbook hailed Jordan as "one of the all-time great Texas lawyers."

Darrell Jordan in 1998, back when he thought he'd be able to dome the Cotton Bowl (Ariana Kadoch / Staff writer)

Yet despite all the plaudits, and two failed mayoral runs, Jordan is perhaps known to most Dallasites as The Man Who Tried to Dome the Cotton Bowl.

Throughout the late 1990s, Jordan believed the only way to rescue the Fair Park landmark, then in a shabby state, was to put a roof on it. And he believed it possible without a single cent from the public coffers: His Cotton Dome Foundation Working Group, then a nonprofit of which he was chair, actually raised $28 million, much of it from Coca-Cola, Bank One and a few other local businesses.

Had he managed to secure another $47 million, the city would have let him begin construction on what was estimated to be a $150-million project.

"This absolutely can happen and will happen," he said on a February afternoon in 1998, sitting in the stadium he was trying to remake in his image. "This makes so much sense for the city and the region that it's going to happen."

On March 18. 1995, Ron Kirk, Darrell Jordan and, at right, Domingo Garcia went to the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Dallas to make the case they were the best person to be mayor. (Irwin Thompson / Staff photographer)

But months later, Ron Kirk told Jordan his plan would never succeed: Dallas planned to chase after the Olympics, with Fair Park and the Cotton Bowl as the centerpiece. The dome was dead.

Yet even after politics divided them, Kirk said Friday, Jordan "was one of the first to step up and work with us on the project to make sure we kept the Cotton Bowl viable. That says a lot about him. He was just a good, decent and fun guy."

Another former Dallas mayor went even further in her praise of Jordan.

"Counting on two hands who our modern-day Dallas icons are, I would definitely include Darrell," said Laura Miller, who shared many stages and daises with Jordan. "Smart, sophisticated, sweet-natured, and totally focused on what was best for Dallas."

Jordan is survived by his three children, Stacy, Patrick, and Kendall.

A memorial service is scheduled Feb. 19 at 2 p.m. at Church of the Incarnation, 3966 McKinney Ave.