Robert Galvin, once one of the country’s business leaders, dead at 89

Robert Galvin, who built his father’s radio company into an international technological giant and moved its headquarters to Schaumburg, has died.

“Without a doubt, the world lost one of the all-time greats,” Greg Brown, chairman and CEO of Motorola Solutions Inc., said Wednesday. “He was one of a kind.”

Galvin, who was Motorola’s CEO for 29 years, was 89. The Barrington Hills resident died Tuesday night of natural causes, his family said.

Galvin was named CEO in 1959 after the death of his father, company founder Paul Galvin. He remained CEO until 1988, and stayed on as chairman until 1990.

He took a company with annual sales of $290 million in 1959 and turned it into a wireless pioneer with revenue of $10.8 billion in 1990.

“Bob always saw around corners,” Brown said. “He understood things no one else did.”

But Galvin also never lost touch with his employees or his community.

Former employees who talked to the Daily Herald in 1998 said he would sit down with them in the lunchroom, listening for the next great idea. His door was always open, they said.

Barrington Hills Mayor Robert Abboud said today’s corporations could learn a lot by studying Galvin’s business instincts.

“He worked hard to make sure his corporation was a member of its community,” Abboud said. “If companies that call themselves U.S. companies today shared Bob Galvin’s philosophy, we’d be the fastest growing and most powerful economy on the face of the Earth.”

In a 1998 interview, Galvin said his father’s approach to running the company heavily influenced his own.

“He was a remarkable role model,” Galvin said of his dad. “We learned substantially by example. He was creative. He was bold. He did take chances. He did admit mistakes.”

Galvin was born in 1922 in Marshfield, Wis. He went to high school in Illinois and then to Notre Dame before joining Motorola in 1944. He led the expansion of Motorola’s walkie-talkie and paging businesses. The company developed the first mobile phone prototype in 1971 under his watch.

That led to the commercialization of Motorola’s DynaTAC in 1983, which was the forerunner of popular phones like the StarTAC that made Motorola a handset leader in the 1990s.

It was Galvin who relocated the company’s headquarters to its current site in Schaumburg. Brown said the Chicago area remained the center of the global corporation’s world because of Galvin’s regional roots, as well as his trust in the Midwestern work ethic.

Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson said Galvin is nothing short of a legend. When Larson is asked at out-of-state conferences where Schaumburg is, he tells them it’s where Motorola is headquartered — and there’s instant recognition.

Larson said many other company moves to Schaumburg, including a large number of Japanese corporations, are likely attributable to Galvin’s long-ago decision.

Galvin pushed the company into new markets in Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and China in the 1980s. He recalled in 1991 how he taught Akio Morita, then chairman of Sony Corp., to windsurf on the lake at his Barrington Hills farm.

Abboud said Barrington Hills has many people, like Galvin, who contribute to society in ways the general public won’t know about until they, too, pass away. Among other charitable endeavors, Galvin’s wife, Mary, co-founded the Stradivari Society, a unique, nonprofit that provides the finest antique Italian string instruments to the world’s most talented young artists.

As the keynote speaker at a Barrington Area Community Foundation dinner in 2004, Robert Galvin reflected on everything from working with neighbors on area issues to chairing a national volunteerism committee for President Ronald Reagan.

“Mary and I are privileged to be with a cadre of our neighbors who do the kind of things you’re doing in a very centered way,” Galvin said.

Galvin’s legacy is also being remembered by executives at Libertyville-based Motorola Mobility, which broke off from Schaumburg-based Motorola Solutions.

“Today, we lost a transformative leader and visionary,” Motorola Mobility Chairman and CEO Sanjay Jha said. “We will continue to honor Bob Galvin’s legacy here at Motorola Mobility. He was committed to innovation, and was responsible for guiding Motorola through the creation of the global cellular telephone industry.”

In retirement, Galvin established two research institutes devoted to electricity, transport and related infrastructure issues, as well as writing, according to the family.

He is survived by his wife, Mary, sons Chris and Michael, daughters Gail and Dawn, and 13 grandchildren. A wake is scheduled for Monday in Skokie, followed by a funeral Mass the next day in Winnetka.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that gifts be directed to the Robert W. Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation at Illinois Institute of Technology, 10 W. 35th St., Suite 1700, Chicago, IL 60616, attention of Betsy Hughes.

Ÿ Daily Herald news services contributed to this report.