The Godfather Retires
Big news from Michael Joyce.

By Neal B. Freeman, chairman, Foundation Management Institute.
April 18, 2001 9:10 a.m.

t was big news in Milwaukee last week when Michael Joyce announced his retirement. It should have been big news everywhere.

For the past 15 years, Michael Joyce has run the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the largest conservative foundation in the country. This position, or more correctly, the way in which Joyce maximized this position, made him the chief operating officer of the conservative movement.

For the past decade and a half, wherever you looked in the battle of ideas, a light dusting would have turned up his fingerprints. If a shaft of free-market light fell upon a dirigiste Econ department — if a classical historian popped up on a trendy campus — if a law school sought to re-open diplomatic relations with the monocultural world, chances are that Mike Joyce had shaped the deal and that a Bradley grant had smoothed the transition.

If a new magazine arrived to afflict comfortable views — if a contrarian opinion clattered onto the PBS schedule — if a think tank launched a salient into occupied territory, chances are that Mike Joyce had been spotted at the local airport a week earlier. Over the period of his Bradley service, it's difficult to recall a single, serious thrust against incumbent liberalism that did not begin or end with Mike Joyce.

He did a fair job as steward as well. The Bradley Foundation was endowed in 1985 with $280 million from the sale of the Allen-Bradley Company to Rockwell International. After giving away almost $300 million in grants, Joyce turns the Bradley Foundation over to his successor with assets of $700 million. It is the 68th largest foundation in the country.

In summing up his performance, Bradley's hometown newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, put it this way (albeit with more truth than music): Under Joyce, Bradley promoted "a philosophy that is very big on individuals and communities solving their own problems and not big at all on government solutions to social issues." In the end, Joyce became what one of his mentors, Irving Kristol, was often called — "The Godfather." (You don't 'spose Hillary was barking up the right tree with that conspiracy thing, do you?)

At 58, Mike Joyce no doubt has another big game in him. There has been talk of a Bush appointment (Joyce is the father of Milwaukee's aggressive school-choice venture and an evangelist for W.'s faith-based initiatives). And there is the hope among some of us in the philanthropic reform movement that Joyce will choose to build another, bigger foundation program elsewhere. But if he does nothing hereafter but carry out his threat to stalk the bass in Big Cedar Lake, he has already completed one long, sweet ride.

Thanks Mike.