Paula Maguire Obituary

Coyle and Maguire Family, I was saddened to hear about Paula's passing. She was a strong and beautiful person. I spent alot of time with her in earlier years. My thoughts are prayers are with all of you at this trying time.

I was friends with Paula throughout high school. We were first bonded through our love of dance. Paula was a beautiful dancer and a wonderful friend. I grew up with her and her whole family. So many memories.... I never have and never will forget Paula

Tim, Jori, Riley and Margaret,
We are so sorry for your loss. Your family is in our prayers.
Matt, Carolyn, Bobby and Danny

I met Paula at 12 or 13 in Crystal Lake. Although our paths didn't cross with any rhyme nor reason after our early 20s, we stayed in touch, met up every few years, talked more often. I am so lucky to have known Paula through all our changes, bummers, joys,and triumphs. What a great cook and how I appreciated her books suggestions, especially asking me to read the stories she, Ann and other friends wrote. She was the best of friends, at all times. I miss her.

She was a friend to be remembered - thank God I met her. You will be in my prayers.

Dear Coyle and family: We loved that girl! We met her too late in life - we want to share more years of laughter and discussions of the Pyle(sp) brothers, ETHS ad nauseum, and people she didn't know but had to listen about for endless hours. What a saint. We feel an enormous void. What courage and humor Paula had. I'll say it again...Jim and I dearly loved her. Our best love to you all. Our prayers have been with you all along. Jim and "Mouse" Sommer

Aunt Paula will be sadly missed by all. We are deeply sadden my her passing. Love to the Maguire family.

Tim, Jori, Riley, and Margaret,
Our thoughts and prayers are with you!
In love and peace,
The Moy Family

To Mr. D and all the Maguires....the Knoblock family has so many fond memories of the 'old days' especially the hockey days...we are so very sad for this loss. Out thoughts and prayers are with you all....

Our warmest condolences,
When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure. ~Author Unknown

Please accept my condolences,your family is in our thoughts and prayers.

My deepest condolences...Paula was a great lady and I'm grateful that we became friends in Law School.

to Coyle and all of Paulas family, our deepest and sincere sympathy-we want you to know that you are in our thoughts and prayers-sandi and tom o'rourke

D, Kevin, Tim and Family and everyone that Paula touched, our deepest sympathies. Paula was the most awesome woman/Mom. One of my fondest memories was coming over to the McGuire's early Sunday mornings, I would walk in the door without knocking and Paula would be watching the Sunday news programs, and cooking Sunday Brunch Eggs Benedict for her boys and any strays in the neighborhood who happened to show up. I have traveled the world and never had a better eggs benedict than Paula's. She had a way of making people feel at home. She will truly be missed.

There are things in life that we come to take for granted. We, in our naivete, assume that they will always be there because we can't remember a time when they weren't. My friendship with Paula was for me one of those things. Until she got sick I never considered that there might be a time when her name and mine would no longer be routinely spoken in the same breath, when I couldn't reach out and find her there to help me sort it all out from her amazingly intelligent and caring perspective.

For so many years it was indeed the Paula and Ann show. Once we teamed up, there was no end to our adventures, beginning with the PTA, and moving through our foray into the world of catering, innumerable road trips, meals shared, late night phone calls, birthdays, concerts, theater, movies, gut splitting laughter and bone chilling tears. Close my eyes and there we are, in tennis shoes, pushing her car out of a giant snowbank and back onto the highway en route to Florida, with Tim in the backseat asking for adverbs to complete his workbook page….old friends seated around her gloriously set dining room table at Christmastime sharing abundant laughter, often too much wine, and her always perfect cuisine….here she comes, suitcase in hand to stay with me to recuperate together from our respective surgical procedures so that I wouldn't have to heal alone….there she is driving me to the hospital in the dead of night because the weight of it all is such that I have ceased to be able to breathe…. We did it all together never thinking for a moment that there would come a time when it would no longer be. Our friendship so deeply woven into the fabric of our lives seemed eternal; we were a team.

Over the years many things changed. Our delicious little boys grew into men, there appeared precious grandchildren to hold and love, our hair got grey, body parts became positioned in lower quadrants, we were forced kicking and screaming into a world where typewriters and wall phones were replaced by computers and phones omnipotent, and eventually we arrived at the place in time when there was more of life to look back on than forward to, but even that was ok because we were a team.

Of all my Paula and Ann memories, there are two that best define our friendship over the years. The first centers around our Christmas event.
Every year for 35 or so years at Christmas time Paula and I hosted a brunch alternating venues between her house and mine. There were times when we thought of not doing it, but ultimately tradition always won out and we set aside an afternoon to be joined by a group of the finest women we knew to share good food, great conversation and uproarious laughter. I have often wished that we had recorded some portions of this annual event over the years to serve as running commentary of the times and our ever changing roles and perspectives.

The second involves our book club. Paula had the idea that instead of reading and discussing other peoples' literary works, we should invite two other dear friends to join us in writing our own. Throughout the course of a year, we all wrote essays relevant to a variety of topics and met for dinner at my house which was then followed by time spent mostly around my dining room table reading aloud what we had written and then discussing the pros and cons of our efforts. During the course of this glorious journey we often connected in that special way reserved for women who are good friends. We laughed, we cried, we shared intimate details of our past and present lives creating in the end a book of memoirs that speaks to all women in shouts and whispers of both the commonality and the differences that define us. What a great idea! What a Paula idea!

Just as she so often showed me how to live. in the end, Paula showed me how to die - with ballerina like grace and dignity, all the while making sure that she did as much as she could to make it easier for those of us she left behind. She was my dear friend, Paula Friedman Maguire, and she now lives in a place in my heart so sheltered and protected that nothing will ever take her away. Perhaps always exists after all. RIP

Our very deepest condolences to Coyle and the family of Paula Maguire.Paula was a lovely, gracious woman of so many talents. Cooking, being an excellent lawyer, mother and wife.
We will miss her. Our prayers are with the family.
Love, Mary Lynn and Brad Myers