The Galvin home at 3038 Normandy Place,
Evanston, Illinois

In 1934, he and Lillian purchased a beautiful home at 3038 Normandy Place in Evanston, Illinois, a symbol and testament to Paul's hard-earned prosperity. Two years later, on a six-week vacation to Europe with his wife and thirteen-year-old son, Paul returned home convinced that war in Europe was imminent. In 1937, the Motorola plant had relocated from its original premises on Harrison Street to a much larger facility on 4545 West Augusta Boulevard, Chicago, where the assembly of home radios commenced. The expanding company was not without its problems, but when Paul's prediction of a world war was tragically realized in 1939, his company began the extremely successful invention and production of the first hand-held portable communications radio, the Handie Talkie, followed by the longer-range Walkie Talkie. Nearly a hundred thousand units of the Handie Talkie and fifty thousand of the Walkie Talkie radios,a technologically advanced form of wartime communication that played a crucial role in the Allies' victory over Germany, Italy, and Japan,were produced for the American military.

On the evening of October 22, 1942, Paul faced his greatest loss and emotional crucible when his twenty-year- old son, Bob, walked into their home on Normandy Place to discover that his mother, Lillian, and her maid, Edna Sibilski, had been brutally murdered, apparent victims of a failed robbery. The highly publicized double murder went unsolved, and the distraught father and son moved out of their home and took an apartment at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Meanwhile, Lillian's sister, Rose Sturm, helped Paul and Bob try to cope with Lillian's death. To suffer the tragedy of murder within one's family is horrific enough, but when it is a high-profile case, the agony is magnified. Paul and his son saw Lillian's entire life reduced to a violent incident packaged as front-page news. On October 24, for example, the Edwardsville Intelligencer ran headshot photographs of Lillian and Edna Sibilski on the front page, two columns away from a photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt in London meeting with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

Paul and his son, Robert "Bob" Galvin

Tragedy is the most unfortunate, unfair kind of fame, and Paul sought sanity and refuge in his old habit: throwing himself into his work, both as president of the Radio Manufacturers Association and of Motorola. As a result, Motorola continued to thrive in car-radio, home radio, and war-communications production and sales. In 1943, Paul and Bob moved back into their home on Normandy Place, for as Paul said, "It was Lillian's home, our home. We shared many wonderful memories there." Further sorrow struck, however, when his brother Joe, with whom Paul had worked closely for so many years in the development of Motorola, died suddenly on March 7, 1944, at the age of forty-five.

Work, by now Paul's instinctive, embattled response to grief, took the forefront once again, and on May 7, 1945, he presented the Annual Stockholders Report at the Graemere Hotel in Chicago, relaying the status of Motorola, makers of "America's Finest Radio for Car and Home," and addressing the postwar "pattern for reconversion of the radio industry back into civilian set manufacture." He insisted that postwar sales prospects for radios were tremendous and that public interest in television indicated that sales were "ready to go on a commercial basis." Often prescient in his business acumen, Paul added, "The potential influence of television on entertainment and education in the future prospectively marks television as another industry as big or bigger than the radio-set business ever was,the potential sales prospect is tremendous."

On the afternoon in 1944 when Paul Galvin introduced himself to Virginia Critchfield, he had suffered personal tragedy, but he was also one of the wealthiest, most powerful entrepreneurs in the nation. One wonders whether Virginia and her family had read the account of the murders in the newspaper and discussed the tragedy or whether she and Paul ever discussed it. One wonders as well whether she knew Paul Galvin as anything more than a name on an appointment calendar and, if she did know, whether it would have impressed her or played any part in winning her affections. Power and wealth affect people differently; for some they are aphrodisiacs, for others a matter of indifference or even antipathy. One might also wonder what intrigued Paul Galvin about his doctor's pleasant-mannered receptionist. Surely he must have noticed the positive, intelligent personality and good character the attractive young woman possessed. He may even have felt comfortable with her middle-class status, so similar to his own economic origins.

At any rate, in early spring 1945, having spoken with Virginia on several occasions while visiting his doctor, Paul invited her to a play for which he had tickets that same evening. Virginia declined, politely explaining she required the courtesy of advance notice. He soon asked again, giving her a full two-week notice, and this time Virginia accepted.

Paul's successful courtship of Virginia Critchfield began with dinners, trips to the theater and concerts, or at times just quiet visits with Virginia and her sister on the front porch of their Oak Park home. During one of those evenings, Paul, uncharacteristically shy, confessed to Virginia, "Your company delights me."

Wedding picture, November 21, 1945
Evanston, Illinois: Robert and Mary Galvin,
Paul and Virginia Galvin

On November 21, 1945, Paul, fifty, and Virginia, two weeks shy of her thirty-fourth birthday, were wed in a quiet ceremony in the living room of Paul's home on Normandy Place. This marriage, an uncommonly happy union, would last fourteen years, until Paul's death in 1959. Among the wedding guests were Paul's good friends, Ed and Hazel Brach; Ed's brother, Frank Brach; Matt Hickey, director of finance for Motorola; his wife, Naomi Hickey; attorney Charlie Green and his wife, Lucille Green; Father Hussey, president of Loyola University; and Bob and Mary Galvin. Virginia was supported by her sister Carol and her parents, Ken and Jessica.

It is tempting to speculate about how Virginia might have felt, becoming married relatively late and to a widower who had likewise come from humble midwestern stock but who had amassed a fortune because of his own hard work and entrepreneurial genius, a man sixteen years her senior. By all accounts, Paul was charismatic, charming, generous, a terrific raconteur, driven to succeed, and devoutly Catholic. He had great expectations of those around him and was known on occasion, in the context of work, to lose his temper when employees did not live up to those expectations. Paul had one grown son, who became Virginia's stepson, a daughter-in-law, and later four grandchildren, who would become part of Virginia's extended family.

To receive the attentions of such a powerful public figure after living a comparatively obscure life as a medical receptionist would have proved a heady challenge for any woman. In addition, Virginia would live in the same home Paul had happily occupied with his first wife, the house where Lillian had been murdered. The emotional adjustment to existence within the context of another person's life would have required maturity of anyone.