Jane Bradley Pettit

Born Margaret Jane Sullivan in 1918, she was adopted by Allen-Bradley co-founder Harry Lynde Bradley after he married her mother, Margaret “Peg” Blakney Sullivan, in 1926, and her name became Jane Bradley. She was educated at Milwaukee girls’ schools including the Lake School, Milwaukee-Downer Seminary, and Milwaukee University School. When Rockwell bought Allen-Bradley in 1985, the fortune that followed funded a foundation she started the same year and a string of gifts Milwaukeeans can still walk into.

She put roughly $90 million toward the Bradley Center, about $20 million into a new public trade school then called the largest private gift to an American public school, and $13 million toward Santiago Calatrava’s addition at the Milwaukee Art Museum. She and sportscaster Lloyd Pettit bought the Milwaukee Admirals; she also took a stake in the Brewers. Worth magazine ranked her among America’s most generous people, and obituaries put lifetime giving above $250 million. In 2000 alone her foundation made more than 160 grants, and she helped buy Georgia O’Keeffe paintings for the museum. She credited her father’s way with factory workers, not a social calendar. The Common Council called her the city’s greatest benefactor.

A first marriage to Grant Hart Messinger in December 1941 lasted seventeen months; she later married Schlitz heir David Vogel Uihlein Sr., and afterward Lloyd Pettit. She died at her River Hills home on September 9, 2001. Her foundation and schools, arena, museum wing, and trade-school gift remain the Milwaukee story of a lifelong resident who treated the city as family business.