Virginia G Piper

Virginia Piper learned about philanthropy from her first husband, Paul Galvin, the founder of Motorola. After his death in 1959 she pledged herself to be a conscientious steward of his money and to preserve the philanthropic tradition he had established. From 1959 through 1969 Virginia resided in Evanston, Illinois and focused her philanthropy in the Midwest. In 1969 she married Kenneth Piper, vice president of Motorola, and with Motorola’s continuing expansion into Arizona during the late 1960s, they moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona. After Kenneth’s death in 1975, Virginia continued over the final quarter century of her life to expand her philanthropy, particularly in Maricopa County. Virginia was born on December 7, 1911, to Kenneth Neel Critchfield and Jessica Higley Critchfield in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. 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.