Lately, for instance, I find myself revisiting Bowerman’s reaction to Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the African-American runners who raised their black-gloved fists and defined those 1968 games. An assistant coach on that team, Bowerman supported Smith and Carlos, backed them wholly and without reservation. He believed in equality. He believed in freedom.

He believed in runners.

I also think a lot these days about Bowerman and the 1972 Games. He was the head coach of the United States track team that year, and when hooded gunmen stormed the dormitory next to the one where Bowerman and his athletes slept, an Israeli race walker managed to slip away and run to Bowerman’s door. Bowerman pulled the kid inside, then called in the Marines, for which he was instantly and severely reprimanded. Olympic officials thought he’d overreacted. But who can say how many lives Bowerman’s “overreaction” might have saved?

Shortly after Bowerman returned from those Games, I drove to his mountaintop house in Eugene. We sat on his porch and gazed into the distance, and he told me about the horror, though not much. He was no chattier that day than any other. The eyes, however, said it all. His faith in humankind had been shaken. He retired soon after.

And then he came back. Bowerman always came back. In no time, he was consumed again with a dozen Nike projects, while privately coaching and mentoring Prefontaine. He had a constitutional inability to quit, something he inherited from his ancestors. They were part of the wild, ragged processional that tamed the Oregon Trail, and Bowerman often recited a favorite line about them: The cowards never started, and the weak died along the way — that leaves us.

Exactly what you want a surrogate father to say.

Recently, I visited my alma mater to give a reading of my new memoir. Before going onstage, I took a tour of the library’s Bowerman Collection. I was keenly interested. And then I was floored. There, in one of the acid-free boxes, lay a sheaf of yellowed correspondence between Bill Bowerman and … Bill Knight.

My dad?

My father and my surrogate. I knew the two had been acquainted as Oregon undergrads, but I had no idea they’d kept in touch through the years, or that, ahead of my arrival on campus, they’d exchanged a flurry of letters about young Phil — my education, athletic and otherwise.