Paul Cowles Valentine
April 3, 1932-April 3, 2025
Portola Valley, CA
Submitted by Lucy Valentine Wurtz

Paul Cowles Valentine passed away peacefully at home on his 93rd birthday, surrounded by his family and friends.

Paul was born in Chicago and raised in Elgin, Illinois, where he lived through high school. By the time he was eight, his only sibling George (ten years older) was off fighting in WWII. In between making mischief with his friends, including the right of passage of stealing and crashing the family car, Paul lived to get letters (and sometimes photos) from his brother about the war and travel. This correspondence taught Paul at an early age that the world was far bigger than Elgin.

Paul met his wife Nancy of 67 years at Miami University of Ohio – a “Miami Merger.” After graduating from Miami, Paul pursued his love of technology at MIT, where he obtained an additional degree in engineering. Paul and Nancy were married in October of 1955.

In 1956, while serving in the Air Force as a flight test engineer at Edwards AFB, Paul contracted polio on the first anniversary of their marriage. He spent over a year in military and VA hospitals, first in California and then back in Chicago to be closer to his parents for support. Already a Chicago Cubs fan, Paul regularly rolled his wheelchair to Wrigley Field from the hospital across the street to see most home games, taking grateful advantage of the Cubs’ offer of free game tickets to disabled veterans.

Following his rehabilitation and discharge, Paul entered Stanford Law School. However, in the summer of 1958, Nancy and Paul did something uniquely adventurous for the time. Taking advantage of Paul’s military privilege to “hitch a ride,” they took a year-long sabbatical from school to travel around the world on troopships and freighters. After this adventure, Paul returned to Stanford and received his law degree in 1961.

Paul had a lifelong and abiding commitment to public service. As a newly minted lawyer, he joined the migration of idealistic and bright-eyed young professionals to Washington D.C., motivated by President Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country” inaugural speech. Paul joined the Office of General Counsel of the Department of Defense, working under Cyrus Vance. Along with the rest of the nation, Paul was shocked at the assassination of JFK in 1963. At work at the time, Paul was invited to grieve with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and others whose offices were nearby in the Pentagon.

The Valentines returned to Palo Alto in 1965 where Paul practiced law for 24 years. Having an MIT engineering degree helped him become an expert in technology law at a time when Silicon Valley was growing in parallel to his budding career. Ultimately, he co-founded his own firm (Spaeth, Blase, Valentine & Klein) and took pride in recruiting talented law students and mentoring them into successful lawyers.

For many years Paul and Nancy were participants in the Creative Initiative Foundation. The Foundation’s practices integrated religion and psychology, combining programs of personal development with positive social action during the tumultuous decades of the 1960’s and 70’s. In 1976, Paul combined his legal and technical skills when he worked with the three General Electric “whistleblowers” who resigned from their jobs as senior GE nuclear engineers in protest against the dangers of nuclear power. Paul accompanied them to Washington D.C., where they testified before a Joint Session of Congress.

In the 1980’s, Creative Initiative became Beyond War, an organization promoting peace through non-violence. After retiring from his law practice, Paul and Nancy moved to Sacramento to lead Beyond War’s Northern California effort full time. After Beyond War, Paul served for several years as a special master in the Federal courts as well as the volunteer Director of Legal Services for Northern California. In 2009, Nancy and Paul moved to The Sequoias, a retirement community in Portola Valley. There they formed many new friendships and Paul sat on numerous committees and served several years as editor of the monthly newsletter The Sequoian.

Paul was an avid reader of literature as well as an accomplished writer, completing and self-publishing his memoir, What I Remember, in 2011. He maintained a daily writing habit for decades, turning out personal correspondence, essays, short stories, and even poetry. Paul and Nancy loved the arts and were season ticket holders of the San Francisco Symphony for many years. Together, they also enjoyed opera, museums, and Broadway musicals.

Paul’s last act of public service was a letter he wrote to the Senate Finance Committee in January 2025, condemning Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment to lead the Department of Health and Human Services due to his opposition to vaccines. As one on the country’s oldest polio survivors who had lived with the disease’s disabling effects for 68 years, Paul felt obliged to speak out about the efficacy of vaccines, believing strongly that the first of the three-dose Salk vaccine he received prior to contracting polio had saved his life.

Paul is survived by his children Amy, Lucy and her husband Brad Wurtz, Andrew and his wife Alice; and his seven grandchildren: Zachary, Ryan, Henry, Kelly, Leo, Daphne and Emma. The family would like to acknowledge the special role that his long-time caregiver Tigist played in providing the support he needed to live his life to the fullest until his final days.

Paul will be remembered for his radiant smile and contagious laugh, his relentless optimism, and his belief in selfless service to each other, the country, and the planet.

Tags: veteran, public service