Pittsburgh Steelers icon also co-owned Kennel Club

Unlike his brothers, though, Dan Rooney rarely visited Florida.

WEST PALM BEACH — In the nearly half century that Dan Rooney and his four brothers have owned the Palm Beach Kennel Club, he maintained a residence in the area, but rarely came down, his nephew said.

“The Steelers were really his life,” Patrick Rooney Jr., chief executive officer of the Kennel Club, said Thursday afternoon.

Dan Rooney, owner of the professional football team that put Pittsburgh on the sports map, garnering six Super Bowl trophies in three decades, died Thursday at 84 in Pittsburgh.

“Few men have contributed as much to the National Football League as Dan Rooney,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.

Rooney’s health had been poor the past three years and grew worse in the last few months, said his nephew, who left the Florida House of Representatives in November. Dan Rooney also was the uncle of Pat Jr.’s brother, U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Okeechobee. Dan Rooney was a powerful force in the NFL,

Dan Rooney was born in 1932, the year his father, Art “The Chief ” Rooney, founded the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise — and, by coincidence, the year the Kennel Club was opened by other owners. Dan, the oldest of five Rooney sons, was a Steelers ball boy as a young teenager and played halfback at a Catholic high school. He already was signing players to contracts as he pursued his accounting degree at the city’s

JEFF HAYNES / AFP / GETTY IMAGES 2006 Then-Pittsburgh Steelers team owner Dan Rooney holds the Vince Lombardi trophy after his team won Super Bowl XL, 21-10, against the Seattle Seahawks in 2006. Dan Rooney’s team garnered six Super Bowl trophies in three decades.