David Frohnmayer never was Oregon’s governor, though he wanted to be. Yet in more than 40 years in largely public life, he left as big an imprint on life in this state as many governors have. Frohnmayer died Monday night in Eugene at age 74.

He was by party a Republican and moderate to liberal on social issues. It was a positioning that cost him the governor’s race against Barbara Roberts, the Democrat, in 1990. Conservative Republicans backed Al Mobley, a social conservative, who took 13 percent of the vote.

It’s Frohnmayer Oregonians have to thank every time they turn to the “Attorney General’s Public Records and Meetings Manual” to make sense of what records and meetings should be open to the public. He published the first one while he was attorney general in the 1980s, a post he held for 11 years.

Also during that time he fought the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the Indian cult leader whose followers purchased the Big Muddy Ranch and then tried to take over the government of Wasco County.

It was then he issued an attorney general’s opinion that said the community of Rajheeshpuram, on the ranch, was not a legitimate city but rather the “equivalent of a religious commune” and thus not eligible for state tax dollars.

The list of Frohnmayer’s accomplishments is long. He was a Rhodes Scholar. He argued seven cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning six of them. He was dean of the University of Oregon School of Law and, for 15 years, the president of the university. He helped the school raise more than $1 billion.

He continued to practice law with a Eugene firm until the end, taking cases that sometimes led to raised eyebrows because, he said, that’s what lawyers do. Locally, he represented Deschutes County early in then-District Attorney Patrick Flaherty’s tenure.

Yet even the best and the brightest must sometimes live with tragedy, in Frohnmayer’s case the loss of two of his five children to a rare genetic disorder. Busy as he was serving Oregonians, he and his wife, Lynn, worked hard to raise money for research into the disease.

Frohnmayer was a man who cared deeply about Oregon and the people who live here. He spent his adult life proving that, over and over.