The story behind Guillow’s is also the story of two people whose passion for flight, commitment to community, and generosity created a legacy that continues a century later.
Before there were millions of Guillow’s model airplanes and gliders, generations of young builders, or a company celebrating 100 years in business, there were Paul and Gertrude Guillow and an idea taking flight in Wakefield, Massachusetts.
Paul K. Guillow was an engineer, a World War I Navy aviator, and an entrepreneur fascinated by the still-young world of aviation. Gertrude Hutchinson was a Wakefield native with a background in banking who would become not only Paul’s wife, but an important part of the company he created and, ultimately, the person who ensured that his dream continued after his life was unexpectedly cut short.
Together, their story became about much more than airplanes...
From Aviator to Entrepreneur
Paul’s fascination with flight had deep roots.
As a young man, he studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Tech with the Class of 1920 before leaving to serve his country. As a U.S. Navy aviator during World War I, Paul developed a fascination with airplanes and aviation history that would remain with him throughout his life. After his military service, he returned to Massachusetts and completed his engineering degree at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
This was an extraordinary time to be captivated by aviation. Powered flight was still relatively new, and during the 1920s, daring pilots and rapidly advancing aircraft technology captured the public imagination.
Paul saw an opportunity to bring some of that excitement home.
In 1926, he started a business in his family’s barn in Wakefield. The enterprise began as NuCraft Toys, producing aviation-themed toys and games before evolving into the model airplane company that would eventually bear his name. From those modest beginnings, Paul K. Guillow, Inc. would grow into one of the best-known manufacturers of balsa wood airplane kits and flying toys in the world.
But the company Paul was building would soon become part of another story.
Paul and Gertrude
Gertrude Hutchinson had roots in Wakefield of her own.
She graduated from Wakefield High School in 1920, attended Boston University, and worked in the Trust Department of State Street Bank in Boston. She and Paul married in 1935, as his young company’s business was rapidly expanding.
Her professional background is an important part of the Guillow’s story. Long before she would find herself responsible for leading a manufacturing company, Gertrude had experience in the financial world and had built a career of her own.
Together, Paul and Gertrude experienced the growth of the business and the challenges that came with it.
One of the greatest challenges arrived with World War II.
Balsa wood became essential to the war effort and consequently difficult for a model airplane manufacturer to obtain. Rather than stop production, the Guillow’s adapted, shifting to pine and cardboard models. The company also contributed more directly to the war effort by building a number of drone aircraft used for armed forces training.
It was another connection between the company and American aviation, but this time on a very different scale from the toys and models Paul had begun producing years before.
By the postwar years, Guillow’s was poised to introduce model building and flying to a new generation of American families.
Then everything changed.
Carrying on Paul’s Dream
In 1951, Paul died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
He had been building his company for only 25 years.
For many small businesses, the sudden loss of a founder can also mean the end of the enterprise. Gertrude chose another course.
She incorporated the company and became its president and treasurer. Together with Paul’s brother Roscoe and others at Guillow’s, she carried the business forward.
The Carnegie Mellon history of Paul and Gertrude describes what happened in a simple and fitting phrase: “Guillow’s carried on Paul’s dream.”
And the dream didn’t merely survive. It continued to grow.
The Jetfire glider became the first Guillow’s glider to be mass-produced and packaged using a high-speed packaging machine, helping the company bring affordable flying toys to the enormous Baby Boom generation.
Gertrude would remain closely connected to the company for the rest of her life, eventually serving as chairman until her death in 1986.
Deep Roots in Wakefield
For Paul and Gertrude, Wakefield wasn’t simply the location of their company. It was home.
Paul began his business there. Gertrude grew up there. And as Guillow’s became more successful, their connection to the community remained strong.
Gertrude’s commitment to Wakefield was formally recognized in 1982, when the Wakefield Chamber of Commerce honored her for her lifetime of community service.
That recognition tells an important part of the Guillow story.
The company was producing toys and model kits that traveled far beyond Massachusetts, but the people behind it remained connected to the community where everything began.
Their generosity also reached well beyond Wakefield.
A Legacy of Giving
Paul’s early connection to Carnegie Tech, today’s Carnegie Mellon University, ultimately became part of Paul and Gertrude’s lasting philanthropic legacy.
Carnegie Mellon recognizes the couple as inaugural members of its Highlands Circle, honoring individuals whose cumulative gifts to the university, either during their lifetimes or through their estates, total $1 million or more.
Gertrude ultimately established the Paul K. and Gertrude H. Guillow Endowment for the University Center through her will. The endowment supports the maintenance of the university’s central gathering place, a hub for student activities and the Carnegie Mellon community.
Today, the Guillow name remains prominently recognized at the Jared L. Cohon University Center.
A plaque there honors ‘Gertrude and Paul Guillow E’20 for Their Commitment and Loyalty to Carnegie Mellon University,‘ and their names also appear on the University Center’s donor wall among the original facility donors.
It is a fitting legacy for two people whose lives were so closely associated with creating things for young people to learn from, build and enjoy.
Building More Than Airplanes
Those things matter. But companies that endure for a century are also stories about people.
Paul Guillow brought together engineering, imagination and his love of aviation to create something in a Wakefield barn in 1926. He couldn’t have known that children would still be opening Guillow’s model airplane kits 100 years later.
Nor could he have known that his own life would end just 25 years into the company’s story.
Gertrude made certain that wasn’t where the story ended.
She carried forward the company they had built together, helped position it for a new generation, remained part of its leadership for decades and used the success they created to give something back — to their hometown, to education and to generations of people they would never meet.
A century later, Guillow’s is still in Wakefield. Model airplanes and flying toys still leave the factory carrying the family name. Children still discover the satisfaction of building something with their own hands, and families still experience that wonderfully simple moment when an airplane is launched into the air to see how far it will fly.
Perhaps that is the most remarkable part of Paul and Gertrude Guillow’s story.
They built airplanes. They built a company. And together, they built a legacy that was made to fly.
