The first time I shook Pat Bowlen’s hand, the owner of the Denver Broncos was sweating harder than a rich guy needs to sweat.

“Are you lost?” Bowlen asked.

Not long after dawn on a summer morning in Greeley, I stood confused, staring up at Lawrenson Hall on the University of Northern Colorado campus, overwhelmed by the sights, smells and logistics of my first trip to Broncos training camp as a 27-year-old reporter with The Denver Post.

The person that came to my rescue and steered me in the right direction was Mr. B.

What struck me most was not this small act of kindness, but the fact the Broncos’ boss was wide awake and already on the job, huffing and puffing at the end of a long run, before breakfast was on the table.

“Well,” said Bowlen, sending me on my way, “get to work!”

Nobody ran harder in pursuit of Broncos’ excellence than Mr. B.

Patrick Dennis Bowlen passed away late Thursday, at age 75, after a lengthy battle against Alzheimer’s disease. Maybe the true measure of a man’s life is what endures after he is gone.

“You can feel Mr. B’s presence here,” said Rod Smith, as the Ring of Fame receiver gazed across the perfectly groomed practice fields at Dove Valley on the first day of training camp in 2018. With Bowlen’s spirit warming him like sunshine on his shoulders, Smith added: “His legacy is everywhere you look.”

It’s hard to fathom now when Super Bowl Sunday is a bigger excuse to party in the United States than the Fourth of July. But when Bowlen purchased the Broncos from Edgar Kaiser Jr. for $78 million in 1984, Denver was a cowtown trying to shake off the dust, and the team practiced on the wrong side of the tracks, at a ramshackle facility that was more trailer park than training complex. Back in those days, the NFL was not nearly the 24/7/365 obsession in the manner everything from the draft combine to smart phones and fantasy leagues to lattes are icons of American culture today.

How much different was the world when Bowlen came to power as an NFL owner? On the spring evening in ’84, when word began to leak that the son of a Canadian oil wildcatter was purchasing the Broncos, I was a cub reporter, slacking on the sofa, playing a war game. (Back then, it was “Risk,” rather than “Call of Duty.”) A newspaper colleague promptly kicked me out of his apartment, handing me a fistful of quarters, with orders to sprint for the pay phone at a convenience store two blocks away and contact every league source in his Rolodex.

What we soon learned: Although Bowlen was not much of a football player in his youth, he relentlessly tackled innovative, big ideas, whether to improve his team or grow league revenues. Mr. B cajoled local taxpayers to build him a new stadium, with the same force he persuaded fellow owners that this country needed prime-time football games on Sunday night.

How immense and enduring was Bowlen’s impact on every, last person who worked for him? Well, when he bought the Broncos John Elway had seven NFL touchdown passes and four professional victories to his name, rather than three championship rings and a bronze bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

All the best mission statements are concise enough to fit on a T-shirt and bold enough to be hung in block letters on the wall at the team’s training facility. “I want us to be number one in everything,” Bowlen declared, then got down to the business of building Broncomania until it was strong enough to outlast him.

Yes, the past five years have been a long, bittersweet goodbye, as it became obvious leaving this earth was the only thing that would allow Mr. B to rest in peace. Since illness shoved him into retirement, Denver has won Super Bowl 50, changed coaches three times and signed star linebacker Von Miller to a contract worth $35 million more than Bowlen paid for the entire franchise 35 years ago.

But the thing that sticks with me are tears that turned the eyes of team president Joe Ellis to sad puddles in 2014, when Alzheimer’s insidious cruelty forced Mr. B to relinquish day-to-day operation of the club he ran with the pride and care of a family store, even when the Broncos grew into a business now worth nearly $3 billion.

“Everybody that knows Pat Bowlen well, loves Pat Bowlen. And I love Pat Bowlen,” Ellis told me on that somber summer day. Then, after choking back emotion, Ellis added words I will never forget, especially because they ring so true now, at the time of Mr. B’s death.

“It is the closure of a tremendous era of Broncos football. But it is not the closure of a tremendous legacy. The only way to do right by Pat Bowlen is to carry forward everything he meant to this football team, this city and the NFL.”

On the way to enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, Bowlen was fitted with wings by the angels. But know what’s really fitting? Mr. B will go in the same Hall of Fame class as Champ Bailey, a cornerback so adored by the Broncos owner he named the family dog Champ.

Mr. B is the Broncos. The Broncos are Mr. B.

The man and the team he made great will be inseparable, forever and always, as orange and blue.