Former Green Bay Packers president Bob Harlan. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Funeral services, followed by a public celebration of life will be held Monday for former Packers President and CEO, Bob Harlan. The 89-year-old died in early March after he was hospitalized with pneumonia.
“This last thing I told him is, we’ll do everything we can to make sure your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren and your great-great-grandchildren know what you did,” said Olivia Harlan Dekker.
Bob Harlan’s granddaughter fought back tears and she talked about Papa Boy, as she called him. She said, “Anyone who knew him knew how humble he was. And he was very much first a husband, a father, a grandfather, he was an amazing family man.”
Harlan, who retired from the Packers in 2008, passed away March 5.
The organization announcing this week, in addition to Harlan Plaza that was rededicated in 2014, it will add Harlan’s name to the stadium facade too.
Harlan Dekker said, “I don’t know if he wanted all this attention when he was alive, to be honest. So a part of me wishes he was here to see it and do it, but I think he would have been a little embarrassed.”
From a young age Harlan Dekker remembers coming to Lambeau Field, sitting with her grandfather in a suite, coloring with a football game in the background.
She said, “I don’t think I realized that, wow, he’s kind of the top dog in this operation. That never occurred to me. So it really dawned on me when he retired and at the houses right down Lombardi, they got together and put up a sign on their fences that says, Thank you, Harlan family.”
For nearly 40 years, Bob Harlan dedicated his professional life to the Green Bay Packers.
“He was old school and he was romantic about the job. He was romantic about football. He was romantic about Green Bay,” said Harlan Dekker.
He helped to bring General Manager Ron Wolf and Hall of Famer Reggie White to Green Bay – winning a Super Bowl in 1997.
Harlan Dekker recalling the story of her grandfather wooing White to come to Green Bay, “He had his pick of any team in the NFL and anywhere else he went, he got, you know, a five star treatment and here in Green Bay, they took him to the red lobster and just said, you know, you can retire Hall of Famer basically anywhere, but here you’ll be a legend, you know, do you want to be a legend, a face of a city?”
Harlan went door to door drumming up support for the sales tax referendum to redevelop Lambeau Field – a project he took to heart.
“He used to say him and my grandma would sit in their car while the construction was happening and just watch,” said Harlan Dekker.
She added, “So to celebrate him in the house that he built, I think will be really beautiful.”
The funeral service for Bob Harlan is Monday at Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral in Green Bay, starting at 2 p.m..
A public celebration of Harlan’s life will be held the same day at the Lambeau Field Atrium. That event starts at 3:30 p.m.
It is general admission and standing room only.
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