Campaign in honor of Jane Pettit to benefit 16 groups
Selections serve variety of needs
Sixteen community groups that will benefit from a $200,000 fundraising campaign in honor of Jane Bradley Pettit and the final year of the BMO Harris Bradley Center were announced Wednesday.
“We’re pleased that we were selected to be a recipient of this wonderful gift,” said Tom Schneider, executive director of the COA Youth & Family Centers.
The agency serves 10,000 children and families in Milwaukee area locations and through a camp in central Wisconsin.
Pettit generously supported COA while she was alive, Schneider said.
The fundraising campaign honors Pettit, who donated the $90 million Bradley Center to the community in memory of her father, Harry Lynde Bradley, co-founder and chairman of the AllenBradley Co. The company is now Rockwell Automation.
The campaign will conclude with an April 11 gala at the Bradley Center.
“It’s a broad-based group because there wasn’t any area of need that she didn’t feel that she couldn’t address,” said Pettit’s granddaughter, Sarah Zimmerman. “She touched so many areas and I think this list represents that.”
About $40,000 already has been raised for the campaign.
The Bradley Center, which opened in 1988, is being replaced by the new $524 million arena that the Milwaukee Bucks are constructing next door. The new Bucks arena is being built with $250 million in public money and is slated to open in time for the 2018-’19 NBA season.
Schneider said he believed the community will respond generously to the effort to raise money to commemorate Pettit.
“I think it’s going to go over extremely well,” he said. “Jane Pettit gave so much to this community and was so committed to this community. Honoring Jane this way is just wonderful.”
The groups that will receive funding through the Pettit campaign are:
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Milwaukee
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee
COA Youth & Family Centers Hunger Task Force,
to support children’s meal programs
Literacy Services of Wisconsin
Milwaukee Center for Children and Youth
Milwaukee Public Library
Milwaukee Public Television/PBS Kids
Neighborhood House of Milwaukee, to benefit the birth-to-3 program
Next Door, to benefit early childhood education Our Next Generation PEARLS for Teen Girls Sojourner Family Peace Center
St. Ann Center for Intergenerational Care, to provide funding for the Bucyrus campus
St. Marcus Lutheran School
Walker’s Point Youth and Family Center