Herbert H Kohl

A Senator from Wisconsin; born in Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, Wis., February 7, 1935; attended Milwaukee public schools; graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison 1956; received M.B.A. degree from Harvard School of Business Administration 1958; United States Army Reserves 1958-1964; businessman, president of Kohl Corporation and owner of Milwaukee Bucks basketball team; Wisconsin State Democratic Party chairman 1975-1977; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1988; reelected in 1994, 2000, and again in 2006 for the term ending January 3, 2013; chair, Special Committee on Aging (One Hundred Tenth to One Hundred Twelfth Congresses). Kohl died on Wednesday afternoon December 27 2023 at his home in Milwaukee. He was 88. his father, Maxwell Kohl, had opened a corner grocery store there in 1927. Herbert and his three siblings were born and raised in the city, scions of a family that in one generation had built an empire of Kohl’s stores across the Upper Midwest. Herbert Kohl was president of the Kohl Corporation from 1970 to 1979, when British American Tobacco bought the remaining corporate interest. He bought The Milwaukee Bucks NBA franchise in 1985 for $18 million and owned for 29 years of mostly losing seasons. Herbert and his siblings, Sidney, Dolores and Allen, attended public schools in Milwaukee. He and another boy from the neighborhood, Allan Selig, who was known as Bud, became roommates and fraternity brothers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where Mr. Kohl earned a bachelor’s degree in 1956. He received a master’s degree in business from Harvard in 1958. Kohl, a lifelong Milwaukee resident who kept a horse ranch in Jackson, Wyo., never married and had no children. He is survived by his siblings.