GREEN BAY — If Bob Harlan was looking down through the clouds and into the Lambeau Field atrium on Monday afternoon, he surely would have been smiling. 

Not, of course, over all the nice things people were saying about him and his transformational tenure as the Green Bay Packers team president and CEO. Although there was a lot of that.

But what Harlan would have surely loved was seeing so many people who worked so hard for, and were so dedicated to, the organization — in no small part because of the way he made them feel valued and important to the team’s success both on and off the field — gathering with the Harlan family to share their favorite memories and retell their favorite stories

From Pro Football Hall of Fame general manager to Ron Wolf, Super Bowl XLV-winning head coach Mike McCarthy and Harlan’s successors as team president, Mark Murphy and Ed Policy, to Judy Mehlberg from the mail room and Lisa Treichel from the Packers Pro Shop and Jeanne Bruette, who spent 21 years as Wolf’s and fellow GM Ted Thompson’s administrative assistant — they all came together to celebrate Harlan, who passed away on March 5 at age 89.

While his 1991 hiring of Wolf to lead the long-suffering franchise’s modern renaissance led to the 1996 team’s Super Bowl XXXI title to end a 29-year championship drought, and his 2005 hiring of Ted Thompson led to the Packers’ next Super Bowl championship team in 2010, Harlan’s most enduring accomplishment was the franchise’s Lambeau Field redevelopment project, made possible by his unrelenting efforts to get the 2000 stadium referendum passed to generate the $160 million in public funds — via a 0.5% sales tax in Brown County — needed for the $295 million renovation.

That project led to the atrium in which Harlan was honored and remembered Monday.

“I know we have a lot of Packers employees here, both past and present. On behalf of all of us, I just want to thank Bob for putting a roof over our head,” Policy told those in attendance, which included fans, staffers and a handful of reporters who’d covered much or all of Harlan’s tenure as president.

“This roof and the atrium that’s below it would not exist without his vision and his tenacity. On the elevator ride coming down, we were just telling stories about how hard it was to accomplish this. Thank you from all of us to Bob for that.”

Wolf, McCarthy, Murphy and Policy all took part in a Q&A session moderated by Harlan’s son, Kevin, the renowned play-by-play man who calls NFL games for CBS Sports and Westwood One radio and was calling NCAA March Madness action in San Diego before taking a red-eye flight to Titletown for the event.

Wolf shared the oft-told stories of how Harlan convinced him to take the GM job in 1991 — after Wolf turned it down in January 1987 when Harlan’s predecessor as president, Judge Robert Parins, didn’t give the GM full authority over the football operation.

“Green Bay was deader than a dead mule when I got here,” said Wolf, who got emotional at one point in the conversation. “[They’d had] 23 years of losing. They had two playoff teams, one of which was from the [1982] strike year, so you can throw that out.

“For Bob Harlan to take a chance on me and give me this opportunity, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime place and it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I’ll never forget.”

Murphy, meanwhile, shared how much Harlan meant to him when he took over in 2008 and how much he admired what Harlan did in getting the stadium referendum passed.

“It’s hard to imagine now, but you [forget] how close the vote was on the referendum,” Murphy said. “He deserves all the credit because since then we haven’t needed to go back [for any more public money]. We’ve made additions, but that one thing Bob did with the major renovation of Lambeau really has made such a huge difference.”

But it was McCarthy, now the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach, who stole the show as his typical emotional self while recalling his interactions with Harlan during his time as head coach.

“He was real. One of a kind,” McCarthy said, fighting back tears. “Bob’s leadership style was just so personable. He could always tell a great story, have a serious conversation and it always ended with a joke or some humor.

“What I really walked away [having learned] from that as a young coach was, he was himself.”

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