Janice Baldwin

Janice Murphy Baldwin, nee Marjorie Janice Murphy, born in Bridgeport CT on July 16, 1926, died in Middleton, WI on February 2, 2020. She was an attorney for the Wisconsin State Legislative Council, a nonpartisan legal office providing legal guidance to legislators and assistance in developing laws. She was particularly proud of having helped draft Wisconsin’s 1984 marital property law that treats all income and possessions acquired by a couple after their marriage as marital property belonging equally to each spouse. Janice also worked at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C. in 1974-75 and 1978-79.

She graduated from the University of Connecticut (1948) in economics and was also a talented mathematician who used these skills to earn money for college by working as a mathematician with physicists in the Air Reduction Company (NY). Being a great athlete, she earned UConn varsity letters in basketball, field hockey and archery.

She then went on to earn a master’s degree from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts (1950) where she worked in the statistics lab to pay for her studies. Janice also worked as a mathematician for Harvard professor and Nobel prize winner, Wassily Leontief. This is where she met her lifelong soul mate, Robert “Bob” Edward Baldwin (1924-2011), who was working as an assistant professor in the Harvard economics department in the same building. Soon after meeting, however, she won a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a year (1950-51) at the University of Manchester (UK). The Fulbright experience transformed her life. She experienced post-war Britain, living with a family in Manchester with whom she traded her sugar rations for their bacon rations. She spent all her long holidays hitchhiking or biking around Europe with three dear friends she met on the boat she took from New York to Manchester.

Returning to the U.S., she earned another master’s degree from Tuft University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts (1952). While working toward her Ph.D., she married Bob in 1954, and moved to Madison, WI in 1964. After their four children were in school, she started law school part-time, earning her law degree in 1971. While working at the Legislative Council, Janice was elected president of the Wisconsin Bar Association (government law division) in 1985. A firm supporter of women’s rights, she was a longtime member of the League of Women Voters. Janice was an avid fan of the University of Wisconsin basketball and football teams, having held season tickets for decades, as well as being a keen fan of the Green Bay Packers. Her other passions were politics, travel, and reading.

She is survived by three of her children, Jean Baldwin Grossman (b. 1955), Richard Edward Baldwin (b. 1958), and Nancy Baldwin Kitsos (b. 1959), as well as her grandchildren Shari and Dina Grossman; Leila and Elise Baldwin; Robert, Julia, and Nicolas Baldwin; Ellen Kitsos; and her beloved daughter-in-law, Anne Wilson, and step grandchildren Jennifer Vaux and Sean Wilson. She was pre-deceased by her husband and her son, Robert William Baldwin (1957-2007).

Visitation will be held at CRESS FUNERAL AND CREMATION SERVICE, 3610 Speedway Road, Madison, on Tuesday, February 11 from 4-7pm. A Funeral Service will be held at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, 602 Everglade Drive, Madison, on Wednesday, February 12, at 11am. Friends may greet the family an hour before the service. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to The League of Women Voters, www.lwv.org/about-us/ways-give.