Amy Rabideau Silvers, Craig Gilbert and Bill Glauber | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Herb Kohl, the former U.S. senator, Milwaukee Bucks owner and retail magnate, died Wednesday afternoon at age 88 after a brief illness.
Kohl's death was announced by the Herb Kohl Foundation.
“Throughout his life, Herb Kohl always put people first – from his employees and their families to his customers and countless charities and initiatives,” said JoAnne Anton, fundraising director at Herb Kohl Philanthropies.
“Herb Kohl Way is not just the name of a street in front of Fiserv Forum. The Herb Kohl Way perfectly encapsulates the legacy of humility, commitment, compromise and kindness to the countless people he worked with, served and helped along the way. These values will live on through his foundation.”
Kohl's leading role in Wisconsin's political, business and sporting culture gave him a unique public profile in the state.
He was one who combined great wealth and influence with a remarkably reserved, even shy personality.
His entry into electoral politics in 1988 at age 53 was based on the household name and goodwill he had cemented through the Kohl's supermarkets and department stores and through the purchase of Milwaukee's NBA franchise. This move was widely seen as saving the team from elimination.
Opponents in his first race accused him of trying to buy a Senate seat. Kohl's answer – the ability to finance his own candidacy made him independent – came in the form of one of Wisconsin's more effective and memorable campaign slogans: “No one is a senator but you.”
Kohl's four Senate victories – the last three by landslides – give him arguably the most assured electoral success in Wisconsin's modern history. Unlike other political giants like Bill Proxmire (his Democratic predecessor in the Senate) or former Republican governor Tommy Thompson, Kohl has never lost a race.
A native son of Wisconsin, Kohl was a driving force in growing the family-owned grocery and department store business into a long-standing success story in Wisconsin.
He was part of the group that brought the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team here in 1970. In 1985 he bought the Milwaukee Bucks to keep the team in his hometown.
Much has been written about the immense wealth of multimillionaire Kohl over the years. However, this was only evident when he made headlines by buying an NBA team or using his own money to run for public office
Kohl was inevitably described as a quiet, reserved and reserved man.
Despite his gentle and reserved nature, friends and family agreed, he was an intense competitor.
“How rich he was never mattered much to him,” brother Sidney Kohl said when Herb Kohl ran for Senate in 1988.
“Making a win was more like the score in the ball game,” he continued. “It was a win.”
Kohl has consistently been ranked as one of the wealthiest members of Congress, with an estimated net worth of $300 million in 1999, according to a review of incomplete figures.
Money was not a part of his childhood.
The son of Jewish immigrants
He was the son of Jewish immigrants, his mother Mary was from Russia and his father Max was from Poland. His father first worked in a bottle cap factory in Schlitz and saved money to open a small grocery store at E. Lincoln and S. Kinnickinnic Ave. in the late 1920s. to open.
In 1941, when young Herb was 6 years old, his father owned a few businesses. The family moved to N. 51st St., north of Burleigh, the West Side neighborhood that became their home.
“They came with nothing,” Kohl later said of his parents. “None of us ever thought we could get by in life with less than full effort.”
Kohl attended Sherman Elementary School and Washington High School, then spent a solitary semester at the University of Michigan. He transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and reunited with his childhood friends there.
One of those friends was Allan Selig — better known as Bud — who was his UW roommate.
Kohl earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.
He served in the U.S. Army for six months and then joined the family business in 1959. There were a dozen Kohl's supermarkets at the time. Brothers Sidney and Allen were also involved in the business.
Kohl, whose first paying job was working as a Kohl's Bag Boy, learned every aspect of the business.
Two decades later, thanks largely to the astute Herb Kohl, the family business had grown to 74 supermarkets, including 12 in Illinois. Its share of the Milwaukee area grocery market grew from a tenth to nearly half.
“We just beat everyone. We just did it,” Kohl said in a 1988 political story. “The time came and went and we just beat them. And we cleaned it up.”
Kohl regularly visited 30 to 40 Kohl's locations per week. He personally interviewed every full-time employee, from executives and managers to food inspectors.
“He knew the employees’ families and the names of their husbands or wives,” former employee Frank Spicuzza said years later. “He often asked, 'How is your wife?' and name them.
As Kohl once said, “If your employees think you’re an idiot, you can’t succeed.”
“My father was a person who had his ego and his needs very much under control,” Kohl once said. “He was a very ambitious man, but he was not a person who felt the need to belittle people or fight with or reduce people. He learned to control those impulses that I think we all have. He was a very controlled, disciplined person and he had a lot of influence on me in that regard.
The family business also owned 10 department stores and 13 drugstores, beverage and bakery stores. and extensive real estate.
A drastic change came in 1972 when the Kohl family received an offer that was too good to refuse, especially as warehouse operations began to capture a larger share of the local grocery market.
They sold 80% of the business to a British tobacco company for a reported $72 million to $80 million. Herb Kohl retained a financial interest and served as the chain's chairman until 1979, when the majority owners exercised their option to purchase the chain.
For Kohl, it was an abrupt and painful transition, not unlike a death or a divorce. He later called it a “turning point in my personal development.”
It meant he was “starting over.”
He began running Herbert Kohl Investment Co. while maintaining his low-key approach.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fortunate to interact with some very intelligent people.”
Owned by the Milwaukee Bucks
He found an opportunity for change with the purchase of the Milwaukee Bucks in 1985, liquidating some of his assets to cover the then-record price of nearly $20 million for an NBA franchise.
Kohl remained owner of the Bucks until he sold the team to New York hedge fund investors Marc Lasry and Wes Edens for $550 million in 2014. At the same time, he pledged $100 million to build a new arena, which became the Fiserv Forum next to its previous home, the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
As part of the deal, Edens and Lasry vowed to keep the franchise in Milwaukee and donated $100 million of their own toward a new building.
The arena opened for the 2018-19 season and the Bucks celebrated their first year in the new building with the NBA's best regular season record and the franchise's first appearance in the Eastern Conference Finals since 2001.
“This is a big step forward toward my goal of keeping the Bucks here,” Kohl said.
And in 2021, he witnessed the Bucks win the NBA title, attended the team's championship parade and later received a championship ring and a standing ovation from the crowd.
“I didn’t get into this to make money,” Kohl said when he first bought the team. “I just hope to break even. Money doesn't motivate me. The pursuit of the almighty dollar? That's not me.”
Instead, Kohl viewed the team as an investment in Milwaukee and believed its loss would have been a psychological and economic disaster for a community struggling to recover from a recession and other adversities.
“Milwaukee has been very, very good to me and my family for many, many years,” Kohl said. “I like it and feel comfortable here. Whenever I come back, I feel like I’m at home.”
Did he interfere with the team, as Don Nelson said in 1987? As owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, Kohl wasn't afraid to spend money or make tough decisions. In 2003 he traded Ray Allen, Sam Cassell and Glenn Robinson and then sent high-earner George Karl packing.
That year, he also almost sold the team to former NBA superstar Michael Jordan, but opted to retain full ownership and kept it for another decade. The Bucks made the playoffs five times during Kohl's tenure after 2001, but none of those teams made it out of the opening round of the playoffs, and the franchise appeared to have stagnated.
“I wouldn’t live forever,” Kohl said after the sale. “I was facing a time in my life where I had to think about the idea of a succession, and then I realized that a new building was necessary and that it was a multi-year project. It's not being implemented.” It came to mind and it was very clear that the team's owners should play a central role in the project over the next few years. Not me, but her.”
Before taking ownership, Kohl was involved in previous unsuccessful efforts to bring the National Basketball Association to the city. He turned down the chance to buy the new Milwaukee Bucks franchise for $2 million in 1968, and businessmen Marvin Fishman and Wes Palalon bought instead.
“Milwaukee didn’t need me then,” Kohl said in 1985. “I think maybe Milwaukee needs me now.”
The quiet businessman who had flown largely under the radar for most of his life was suddenly in the public spotlight. Exceptions to this were rare.
Kohl was active in Jewish causes and was chairman of the Milwaukee-area United Way campaign in 1971, then known as the United Fund. When the campaign failed to reach its goal, Kohl wrote a check to cover the remaining $25,000 shortfall.
Kohl served as chairman of the state Democratic Party from 1975 to 1977. In 1977, he founded the HHK Foundation for Contemporary Art and acquired about 50 works by nationally recognized artists.
Some were donated to the Milwaukee Art Museum and other museums; others were sold to support the foundation's work, which increasingly focused on social issues. In 1970, Kohl was also part of an investor group that brought the Seattle Pilots baseball team to Wisconsin to become the Milwaukee Brewers.
Herb Kohl's life in politics
Then came politics in 1988.
Two years earlier, Kohl had flirted with running for the Senate, but decided against it. This time, when incumbent Democrat William Proxmie announced his retirement, Kohl jumped into the race. And he faced a tough challenge, starting in the Democratic primary, where he defeated former Gov. Tony Earl, attorney Ed Garvey and Secretary of State Doug La Follette.
His political promises were simple and often heartfelt.
“I promise that if I am elected, I will put my heart and soul into your service every day,” Kohl said.
As he campaigned before a small group of seniors in Superior, his eyes were intense but his words were gentle. “Greetings…and hope you consider me this November,” he said.
The voters did it. Kohl defeated Republican Susan Engelleiter by about 100,000 votes.
If a multimillionaire could be a man of the people, then Kohl was that man. He enjoyed eating at Benjamin's on Oakland Ave. in Shorewood or at a George Webb restaurant. His luxury apartment overlooked Lake Michigan and Prospect Ave., but was essentially a comfortable, private place to live. He usually got up before dawn and went swimming every morning.
An admirer of President John F. Kennedy, Kohl advocated improving educational opportunities, especially for the poor. He pushed for defense spending cuts; Establish a national child care training and financial assistance program; imposing trade sanctions on countries that allow illegal drug trafficking to flourish; political campaign financing reform; and increasing federal income taxes on the very rich.
Despite all this, he resisted being labeled a liberal.
“I’m running as a businessman,” he said. “I’m the kind of person who didn’t spend a dime until I earned a dime.”
Kohl often remained reserved and remained non-committal on important issues in the interest of further studies and political effectiveness.
“I want to keep my mind open so I can make the best decision without precommitting myself,” he said during the 1994 Senate race.
“Maybe I have my own personal opinion,” he then said. “When I was in business, I was able to express my opinion, make decisions and move forward. But that's not where I am today. I'm in a legislature, and you can never get caught up in positions that are too rigid, because that's how it was.” You're in a situation where you're ineffective.
Kohl served on the Senate Judiciary Committee and worked to get Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Diane S. Sykes confirmed to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2004.
Kohl's foundation noted that during his 24-year political career, the senator has defended America's Dairyland and the state's business interests while advancing important nutrition, health and safety legislation. In education, he supported legislation that served as a model for the No Child Left Behind Act. went
His Senate office was also known for his service to constituents.
Kohl also donated significant sums over the years, including $25 million to the Kohl Center Arena at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The donation, announced in 1995, was the largest single donation in UW history at the time.
Founded in 1990, the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation has provided more than $34 million in grants and scholarships to Wisconsin students, teachers and schools.
“The more you give, the richer you become,” he once said. “It’s God’s way of taking care of things.”
In 1976, Kohl built a private dude ranch for himself in Red Hills, Wyoming. A few years earlier he had visited a friend in Wyoming. He learned to ride and fell in love with the beautiful surroundings.
The ranch became a retreat, including for his circle of friends, who were nicknamed the “Gang of 12.” He once called basketball coach and legend Al McGuire his best friend. I'm not sure if he's considered part of the official gang.
He once owned a third of all private land in the Gros Ventre Valley south of Grand Teton National Park.
In 1983, in the first-ever land swap of its kind, Kohl agreed to limit development on 1,200 scenic acres in Wyoming in exchange for the right to develop other land. He wanted the land to be preserved for environmental reasons. He also wanted a fair return for the work done.
For Kohl, it was always about creating value and improving the status quo.
“I think he doesn't just want to be remembered for saving the money and building a big company,” said David Axelrod, a friend and political consultant from Chicago, during the 1988 campaign.
“I think he’s tired of this,” he said. “I mean, how many millions can you make?”
“Life is change,” said Kohl. “I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
That was the one thing in Kohl's life that never changed.