RJ Bentley’s restaurant and bar in College Park was packed.

It’s a familiar scene for the University of Maryland students who have frequented the bar, decorated with dozens of college jerseys, for decades. Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” blasted through the speakers. People weaved through the crowd, sipping on wine and balancing full glasses of beer. At the bar, a group of friends threw back shots.

But this Tuesday evening party didn’t follow a Maryland football game. This was John Brown III’s celebration of life.

Pictures of Brown, who co-founded RJ Bentley’s 46 years ago, flashed across one of the TVs in the corner of the bar. Flowers from his memorial service, held earlier in the day, lined a table. Most people were wearing black, but they donned green buttons declaring, “It’s OK! I know John Brown.” Drinks were on the house.

Brown, a College Park legend who also chaired the Maryland Stadium Authority, died on Nov. 9 of heart failure. He was 77.

“He took about 150 years of living and crammed it into 77 years,” said Rick Jaklitsch, Brown’s longtime friend, as he sipped on a glass of pinot noir — also Brown’s drink of choice. “No one had more fun.”

Many who attended were former employees or Maryland players whose jerseys hung on the wall. “He always gave you the biggest hug coming in here,” said Jamie Wu, who played football at Maryland in the late 1990s.

“He was a father figure to my twin sister and I — a total class act, loyal to his friends and family, and always made you feel special,” said Colby Carrier, who tended the bar at RJ Bentley’s for about three years.

“He was one of the adults who always knew what the kids were up to,” said Jon Brothers, who played lacrosse in the ’90s.

Brown was born on May 9, 1947, and raised in North Carolina, where he swam and played basketball in high school. He briefly studied at the University of North Carolina but dropped out to enlist in the Army, where he spent a few years upgrading its London terminal, The Baltimore Sun wrote in a 1999 profile of Brown.

He returned to the United States and earned a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Maryland in 1973. After graduation, Brown worked in transportation, but he longed for an opportunity to gain personal success and work with his hands, The Sun reported.

Brown and two friends opened RJ Bentley’s in 1978, naming the bar after two of their initials and the British luxury car. They wanted the bar to be an upscale hangout spot for the College Park community, friends said. At the time, the drinking age was 18 for wine and beer and 21 for liquor.

A few years after opening, in walked Parris Glendening, who’d just started teaching at the University of Maryland, way before he became governor. He and Brown made fast friends. Almost every time Glendening came back to the bar, he’d see Brown. Glendening started a running joke: How many John Browns are there?

As Glendening pursued a political career, he’d often stop by RJ Bentley’s after long days on the campaign trail. Brown would put him up in the back of the restaurant, and despite Glendening’s insistence otherwise, the owner rarely left him a check.

“When you have a friend in John Brown, you have a friend for life,” he said.

As governor, Glendening appointed Brown chair of the Maryland Stadium Authority, a board of state and city appointees that finances and manages sports facilities in the state. The decision was a no-brainer, Glendening said — Brown cared about Maryland sports and wanted to see them succeed.

Brown had ties everywhere, also serving in leadership roles in organizations benefiting the College Park community and the University of Maryland. He had friends in high places. But RJ Bentley’s was home.

The bar was always popular among the college crowd, but it gained national fame when ESPN sportscaster Scott Van Pelt, a Maryland graduate, started shouting it out after Terps victories: “Let’s go to Bentley’s!”

“This place is John Brown to his core,” said Jamie Large, a former bartender. “He is the heart and soul of College Park.”

Large said Brown helped her and many other employees through difficult times in their lives. He genuinely cared for every person who worked at Bentley’s, former staff said, and would often ask servers and bartenders about their future career aspirations.

“You were a person before you were an employee,” said Katie Wilson, another former bartender.

During the COVID pandemic, Brown started donating sandwiches to Meals on Wheels. Even after the restaurant reopened and life returned to normal, Brown continued supplying food because “he just thought it was the right thing to do,” said Sarah Arnold, a former employee.

“He was the type of person you look up to and you say, ‘I want to be him when I grow up,’” said Ryan Ruschak, a manager at RJ Bentley’s.

Brown could often be found sitting in the corner of the bar, especially during happy hour, drinking a glass of wine. His favorite seat was right below a street sign hung on the wall: John Brown Road.

When he wasn’t running his hands across the counter to make sure the bar wasn’t sticky, Brown would chat about people he knew and share stories about his family, friends said. He’d often talk of his wife, Keene Barroll, and his five children and seven grandchildren.

On Brown’s 70th birthday, his kids and grandkids wrote him a letter they republished in his memorial program. They thanked him for giving them “John Brown’s Rules for Life,” which include: You can never say thank you too many times; always introduce yourself to your bartender; and life is short, you should have as much fun as possible.

Those rules also applied to his memorial event at the bar, said Evan Behrendt, the general manager of RJ Bentley’s.

“He was a celebratory man,” Behrendt said. “He did not want this to be a mournful, sorrowful celebration. He was always there for a good time.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the drinking age for wine in 1978.

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