Clint Murchison III, the eldest son of Dallas Cowboys founder Clint Murchison Jr., died of prostate cancer on Tuesday at his Dallas home.
Family members described the 77-year-old Murchison as a quiet, introverted, but funny, quick-witted and intelligent man who was devoted to his family and to others. He also served as chairman of Tekon Corporation, an investment firm founded by his grandfather, oil tycoon Clint Murchison Sr., and as president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas, which his father founded.
Murchison was born in San Antonio in 1946. His grandfather flew Murchison Jr. and his pregnant wife from Massachusetts to Texas so that Murchison III could be born in the Lone Star State, according to the lawsuit. Hole in the roofa book by a former author about the Murchison family. Dallas Morning News Staff writer Michael Granberry and Burke Murchison, brother of Clint Murchison III.
When Murchison Jr. was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his first wife, Jane, was pregnant with Murchison III. Murchison Sr. was determined that his first grandson, who would bear the Clint name, would be born in Texas, not “Yankeeland.”
“There was concern, even panic, about where the baby would be born,” the book excerpt reads. “So the Murchison patriarch did what any oil-rich clan leader would do: He flew Clint and his wife in a private DC-3 plane called the ‘Flying Genie,’ named by Clint Sr. for his second wife, Virginia Murchison, to an air force base in San Antonio where Jane’s mother lives, and arranged for Clint III to be born in Texas.”
Murchison Jr. founded the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys in 1960 when Murchison III was 14 years old. Burke Murchison said that as a child, he and his siblings attended every Cowboys home game and playoff game (including the team’s first few Super Bowl appearances) and watched their father build the Cowboys into one of the top teams in the NFL. The team was winless in its first season, and the Cowboys had several more losing seasons before going .500 in 1965 and competing for the NFL Championship in 1966.
“We always went to the Cotton Bowl together,” Burke Murchison said, “and it was incredible to see the team come together and turn it around.”
Burke Murchison said he and Clint were close since childhood, as they were only two years apart, and that some of his fondest memories of playing football together in high school were with his brother.
Murchison III’s son, George, said his father instilled in him and his siblings the same love of the Cowboys he grew up with by taking them to games and the Super Bowl in the 1990s. George Murchison said his love of family was even greater than his love of football.
“He loved my children, he loved my grandchildren,” George Murchison said. “Just when you thought he was going to walk away emotionless, I turned around and he was holding my daughter. He definitely loved his grandchildren.”
George Murchison said his father was a quiet man who led by example rather than telling people what to do.
“Friends said he was intimidating. I laughed because he wasn’t that kind of person to me, but I could understand why they thought that,” George Murchison said. “He had a pretty flat expression on his face, but in the right company and in the right situation, and even outside the right company, he was known among his peers and close friends as a very funny guy. A very clever guy.”
“One of my earliest memories is being in a record store with him, and we heard a snap from across the room,” George Murchison said. “His snap was the loudest I’d ever heard, and my brother and I could hear him from across the store. Nobody would have expected this quiet guy to have such a strong sense of groove, but he did. He had a sense of groove, and a very quiet demeanor.”
George Murchison also said his father was an intellectual and knowledgeable man who enjoyed deep conversations with family and friends.
“He was just a deep thinker and he was always reading,” George Murchison said. “He was a student of life, and that showed in his intellectual curiosity.”
Murchison comes from a family of successful Texas businessmen: his grandfather, Clint Murchison Sr., was an oil tycoon who left a fortune of $500 million to his sons after his death in 1969. Meanwhile, Clint Murchison Jr. was already on the road to success, having founded the Cowboys nine years earlier and grown them into the most valuable franchise in professional sports.
After the rival AFL was founded in 1959, the NFL gave Murchison Jr. and Dallas their first professional team, the Dallas Texans, now based in Kansas City as the Chiefs. Murchison, along with Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, are considered to have sowed the seeds for the NFL-AFL merger and the Super Bowl that came with it.
After falling into tough financial situations, Murchison Jr. sold the team to HR “Bam” Bright in 1984, and then after several losing seasons, sold it to Jerry Jones in 1989.
Murchison Jr. also built Texas Stadium in Irving, the home of the Cowboys from 1971 to 2008. Granberry credited Murchison with using the building as a revenue generator and pioneering a new style of sports stadium with a partially covered roof to protect fans from the sun and rain.
Murchison III is survived by his wife, Helen, three children, Clint IV, George and Coco, four grandchildren and three siblings, Burke, Robert and Cork Ann. A memorial service will be held from 4:30-6:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 18th at Brook Hollow Golf Club in Dallas.
