Paul and Virginia (left) on a holiday vacation
at Camelback Inn, Paradise Valley, Arizona

However quiet and simple it may have appeared, Virginia's wedding represented no ordinary union. The ceremony itself marked a dramatic rite of passage from one manner of life to another. Matters of etiquette, fashion, and personal conduct in "polite society" must have become suddenly essential for Virginia to learn. To Paul's credit, he recognized her need for enhanced social poise in this new and unfamiliar environment, and to Virginia's credit, she worked assiduously to attain the level of conscious dignity and social poise she would become so highly respected and deeply admired for. For example, she would buy and read etiquette books and was known to regularly study the dictionary to increase her vocabulary. She possessed a writer's sensitivity, using the appropriate word for the right occasion; her hundreds of handwritten letters, which people were loath to discard, are proof of this skill. She understood that the true foundation of etiquette was not elitism but courtesy, and Virginia elevated courtesy to an art form. She was an autodidact, interested in everything from finance, social etiquette, and the rules of gamesmanship to psychology, spirituality, and the arts. She enjoyed life immensely, a tribute to her upbringing, and this, too, was part of her charm and her presence, perhaps part of what Paul Galvin first saw in her. Virginia was not an ornament,a "trophy wife." Though she was bright, beautiful, and younger by sixteen years, Paul never saw or treated her as anything less than a full and equal partner in his life.

A Galvin Christmas, 1950s: (left to right)
Gail, Mary, Michael, Christopher, Robert and Dawn

Bob Galvin describes their partnership in the following passage:

One of my father's qualities, and it was a remarkable quality,I suggest it was a distinctive quality,is that he was a man's man, but he could think like a woman. Very few men can think like a woman.

Now what do I mean by thinking like a woman? He could imagine what must be going on in a lady's mind and then, because he was sensitive, could be constructively responsive. He understood women more than any man I knew. He encouraged Virginia's natural achievement; it was not a Pygmalion type of relationship. He'd boost her along, quietly, modestly explaining things to her. And Virginia was a fast learner, and she did things for Paul, too. These were two individuals who enhanced one another's stability and growth. My father was a great supporter of women; he lifted the women he knew. So although Virginia was a succeeding, achieving human being on her own, she was also well supported first by a great mother and father and then by her husband, my father.

The Galvins made annual winter visits to Phoenix beginning in 1949, when the first Motorola research and development facility was established on North Central Avenue in Phoenix. With twenty employees led by Dr. Daniel Noble, the site would expand and, by 1978, include five affiliated semiconductor facilities in Mesa, Chandler, Tempe, Scottsdale, and Phoenix, with over twenty thousand local employees.

On their winter jaunts to Arizona, Paul and Virginia stayed most often at the nearby Camelback Inn, enjoying parties with friends and family, golfing, and horseback riding, all the sun-drenched pleasures Arizona offers to people subject to interminable winters in the Midwest. Built in 1936, the Camelback Inn was an adobe-style, latilla-beamed resort set at the base of Mummy Mountain in Paradise Valley. Early guests included William Boyd of Hopalong Cassidy fame, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, and Clark Gable. At the time Paul and Virginia stayed there, Camelback Inn was perhaps Phoenix's premier resort, and in time, Bob and Mary Galvin and their children, Paul's brother Raymond "Burley", his sister Helen, Virginia's parents, and Carol Critchfield and her son Paul were all coordinating winter visits to the resort. The two extended families, the Galvins and Critchfields, would always remain closely connected to Paul and Virginia. Arizona was becoming a welcome gathering place, as well as a fast-growing Motorola development site, for the extended family and friends of the Galvins. Because of their many visits to the state, Virginia would later choose Arizona as her permanent home. Paul and Virginia's wonderful memories of Arizona eventually led Virginia to make Maricopa County the fortunate recipient of her diverse and magnanimous philanthropy.

In 1946, Bob and Mary Galvin had their first child, a daughter named Gail, adding Dawn in 1949, Christopher in 1950, and Michael in 1952. Until they moved to their four-hundred-acre farm in Barrington, Illinois, in the late 1950s, the growing family lived in Evanston, not far from Paul and Virginia's home on Normandy Place. Visits to the younger Galvin household were frequent, particularly on holidays and Sundays. When the Galvin children were small, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were always celebrated at Bob and Mary's.

Bob Galvin offers the following memories:

We saw my father and Virginia just enough, just enough for Virginia. She had a family, her marvelous mother, father, and sister, and here she came into this family, the family of this man who had one child and four grandchildren, and what was her role in that? Was she going to become the new surrogate mother? No, that wasn't necessary. We were all grown up, Mary and I, so we saw them just enough, once a week or once a month, but always with great cordiality. It was an immediately pleasing relationship.

Virginia was a decent, quiet, respectful, bright person, generous in spirit toward my father. That won us all. There was no discord about Virginia. She never did anything to cause difficulty, and she never presumed anything. She did not try to recast the culture of our family. She was nicely fashioned as a human being, and she had her own wonderful family, too. That was one of her strengths, that her family was very much accepted by ours,everybody liked Ken, Jessica, and Carol,so bringing this other cadre into our family was a nice fit. Both families were comfortable with one another. It was a marriage of kin, of families. The two families formed a substantial, enhancing ensemble, and Virginia stood out as the centerpiece.

Executives Kenneth Piper, Elmer Wavering,
and Ed Vanderwicken join Paul and Virginia
Galvin to admire the 25th Anniversary memento
presented by employees at a Motorola
company picnic.

Mary Galvin recalls those days, when Paul and Virginia were always together, deeply in love and devoted to each other. Virginia, she recalls, seemed a bit reserved and shy, perhaps unused to the rambunctious nature of a household with so many high-spirited children. After a visit from Paul and Virginia, Mary would invariably ask her children why they had acted up so when they were normally such good children. Their roundabout but charming answer was that this was their way of trying to break through their step-grandmother's reserve, to get her attention. Today, Gail, Dawn, Christopher, and Michael remember Virginia from the perspective of children. Though she was still a relatively young woman in her thirties and early forties, Virginia is remembered by the oldest, Gail, for her "beautiful handwriting, artistry, and way with words. I wanted to emulate her handwriting," said Gail. "First just the artistry itself, later the substance of who she was. We probably scared her, four active children in the house. She had a lovely timbre to her voice, a very unusual voice, pleasant and lyrical. She was beautiful, stately-looking, and very impressive to me. I think she upheld being a lady, in the true sense of the word, as a goal. She personified dignity to me."