Ann Lurie, the self-described hippie who became one of Chicago's most famous philanthropists, donating more than $100 million to the hospital where she once worked as a pediatric nurse, died Monday at the age of 79.
Her death was announced in a statement from Northwestern University, where Lurie, a trustee of the university, had donated more than $60 million to the university. The statement did not say where she died or what the cause of her death was.
An only child raised by a single mother in Miami, Ms. Lurie protested the Vietnam War during college and planned to join the Peace Corps after graduation. In an interview, she said she chafed under the weight of wealth even after marrying Robert H. Lurie.
Lurie teamed up with former University of Michigan fraternity boy Sam Zell and, as partners in Equity Group Investments, built a real estate and investment empire whose portfolio included the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Cubs. Lurie also held shares in the Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox.
He died of colon cancer in 1990 at age 48, leaving behind an estate valued at $425 million. By 2007, Lurie had given away $277 million, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
In recognition of the care Mr. Lurie received at Northwestern University's Cancer Center, the couple made a gift to Northwestern University's Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center to expand its treatment and research capabilities.
After her husband's death, Ms. Lurie became president and treasurer of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Foundation and founder and president of Lurie Investments, which supported her philanthropic efforts.
Among her many projects at Northwestern, she established a professorship in breast cancer research and oncology at the Feinberg School of Medicine and helped raise funds for the 12-story Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center.
Her $100 million gift helped fund the construction of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, which opened in 2012 to replace Children's Memorial Hospital, where Lurie had worked as a nurse since the early 1970s.
She was also a key benefactor of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Gilda's Club Chicago, a cancer support group named for Gilda Radner, who died of cancer in 1989, and the University of Michigan. In 2004, Chicago honored Lurie by naming a four-block street West Ann Lurie Place.
Known for his hands-on approach to philanthropy, Lurie has also focused on Africa and Asia, including founding and supporting the African Infectious Disease Village Clinic in Kenya for 12 years, during which he visited Kenya frequently.
“The dictionary definition of philanthropy is loving humanity and caring about humanity,” she told the Sun-Times in a 2004 interview. “You can be a philanthropist even if you've never written a check. It's the passion you feel for people who are less fortunate.”
Lurie was born on April 20, 1945. Her parents divorced when she was four years old, and as an only child, Anne grew up in a Miami home with her mother, Marion Blue, a nurse, her grandmother, and her aunt.
Lurie enrolled in the nursing program at the University of Florida in Gainesville and graduated in 1966, married to a man who wanted to become a lawyer.
Her plans to join the Peace Corps were thwarted when her husband enrolled in law school, and although he came from a wealthy family, she later said she insisted on living on her salary as a nurse.
The couple later settled in Fort Lauderdale, where she worked as a nurse at the county hospital and her husband opened a law practice.
“His priorities were very different,” she told the Sun-Times, adding that he would drive a Porsche that his family had given him. The couple divorced in 1971, and Lurie said she “vowed to never get involved with wealthy people again.”
She said she was captivated by Chicago's culture and diversity and moved there “not knowing a single person” to work as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse at the hospital that would later bear her name.
She met Mr. Lurie that same year in the elevator to the laundry room of her apartment building. With long red hair pulled back by a bandana, he was “a very unusual guy,” Mr. Lurie said in 2004. “If he'd been wearing a suit and tie, I just wouldn't have been interested.”
She was alarmed when she learned of Mr. Lurie's wealth, but then she discovered that the two had similar upbringings and held similar values ​​– his father died when he was 11 and he was raised by his mother in Detroit.
The couple had two children before their marriage and four more afterwards. Mr. Lurie was diagnosed with cancer in 1988.
Lurie married film editor and cinematographer Mark Muheim in 2014. She is survived by her six children, 16 grandchildren, and two of her husband's sons.
In a 2004 interview, Ms. Lurie said she and her husband tried to steer their children away from the idle lives of the rich: “We kept them grounded,” she said.
They hired minimal household help, and Mr. Lurie even tried to mow the lawn and shovel the snow off the driveway. “He loved that lifestyle,” Ms. Lurie says. “And so did I.”