Morgridge Book

Dear Tashia and John:

It is a special pleasure to contribute a short but indelible memory to this book of appreciations from your UW friends. It has to do with your generosity in funding buildings for the Business School and the School of Education in the early 2000s. Those projects proceeded more or less on the same time line and when they were finished, there came an opportunity to thank you publicly at a Foundation dinner event. Many of us university officials rose to express our thanks; but I remember the look of surprise, and then pleasure, in your eyes when I noted that these gifts made UW–Madison the only Big Ten university which had invested equally and visibly in both these important academic disciplines. The usual pattern, of course, is to find wonderful new business school buildings and threadbare schools of education housed in tattered hand-me-down buildings tucked away somewhere on campus. It might not be immediately evident, but the symbolism of the Wisconsin pattern facilitated by you both was quickly noted on campus by faculty and students. I have subsequently heard mention of it as well at forums elsewhere. I have no doubt that you planned all this carefully but wanted to recall my appreciation for the intangible boost your gifts provided quite over and above the tangible buildings and the service they render every day. Thank you so much.

We will look long and hard for other alumni with your steadfast and enduring support of UW–Madison.

I continue to spend the first half of each year at Stanford and hope we may meet there again. Until then, please count me among your greatest fans!

Katharine Lyall UW System President, 1992–2004