For a while, they liked to listen to John A. T. Galvin around San Francisco. He often regaled cocktail parties with fascinating tales of his past. Such as the time he bought a shipload of calcium compound in the Orient and made huge profits selling it to natives as a remedy for diarrhea. Or the time he cornered the Malayan tin market. Or the time he interviewed Mao Tse-tung as an adventuring reporter in China during the '30s.
But Galvin never really got down to details about his fortune, estimated at $150 million. He moved to suburban Woodside in 1955, proceeded to splash about in the social life there. He made quite a hit at first—entertaining lavishly on his estate, allowing the horsy set of Woodside to canter over his acres. He gave $50,000 to build an indoor riding ring at Stanford University in nearby Palo Alto. Even when the university turned down a daughter for admission, Galvin let the contribution stand.
Soon Woodside got to thinking this was all a bit too showy. "Typical nouveau riche" sniffed a neighbor. Hurt, Galvin packed up his Irish-born wife and five children in 1958 and moved to a 35,000-acre ranch near Santa Barbara. Ostensibly, he wanted to offer riding room for the U.S. Olympic riding team, of which his daughter Trish was a star. That seemed fine—until last October, when John A. T. Galvin abruptly shut down the ranch, closed down the school he had started for his children, loaded up his prize Irish horses and left for Dublin.
San Francisco might have forgotten its mysterious millionaire—but the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has made Galvin a conversation piece again. It filed liens against his California property for $21,261,818 for back taxes—the largest lien against an individual in IRS memory. The Government says John Galvin owes that rajah's ransom for taxes unpaid be tween the years 1954 and 1957. Calvin's California lawyer says he owes nothing.
Since the liens were filed, there has been some digging done into Galvin's background. It still doesn't go very deep. He was born in Hobart, Tasmania, worked as a null messenger for a time, was fired as a classified advertising salesman from a newspaper in Melbourne. Australia, because the management thought girls sold the ads better. He headed for Hong Kong to seek his fortune. He apparently found it after World War II in the vague area of "mining and transportation," it is said. He has a company in Malaya called Eastern Mining and Metals Co., Ltd. Beyond that, little is known. The world of John A. T. Galvin's wealth could become public when his tax case comes to court. But, as Galvin's California lawyer says, "These things take forever, you know."