Source: The Capital Times
Date: May 18th 2004

Brad Whitford brought the star power of television fame to a fund-raising lunch for the Madison public schools on Monday, but it was a local entrepreneur who put the big money on the table.

Not that Whitford, an East High School graduate who plays Josh Lyman on the NBC drama "The West Wing," was stingy with either his time or his money. He stayed in Madison an extra day after speaking at a series of University of Wisconsin-Madison commencement ceremonies so he could be the headliner at this event, which drew almost 400 people to the Alliant Energy Center. And he donated $5,000 to start a scholarship fund for theater students at East High.

But it was John Taylor of Impact Inc. who built on his previous gift to Madison schools to try to help each of the district's 42 schools build their own endowment fund to pay for things not covered by the taxpayer-funded budget.

Last year Taylor and his wife, Leslie, made challenge grants of $5,000 each to 13 Madison schools. If the schools could raise another $5,000, they would have enough to start an endowment fund. All 13 have achieved that goal.

Taylor announced Monday that he and his wife were making $5,000 challenge grants to the other 33 Madison schools and that they would repeat what they did with the first 13 - give each school $500 to help pay for the incidental costs of fund-raising.

In addition, the Taylors, through their Clay-Price Fund, donated money to provide a staff person for the Foundation for Madison's Public Schools, the fund-raising entity that put on Monday's lunch.

Whitford praised the efforts that people in Madison are making to help their schools. "If we believe in our children, if we believe in our future, we have to have the best education possible," he said.

He spoke of the decline of the public schools in California and warned that "democracy will not survive if every citizen does not have access to a good education."

But all was not serious for Whitford in his talk. He reminisced about his days at East and the good advice he received from East teacher George Kelly, who was also his tennis coach - "Don't smoke between matches."

Whitford said he was pretty amazed that he had turned what had been an extra-curricular activity in high school - theater - into a career. "Just imagine if I had been in the bell choir," he mused.

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