Ann Lurie, a self-proclaimed hippie who became one of Chicago’s most famous philanthropists, in one case giving more than $100 million to a hospital where she once worked as a pediatric nurse, died Monday. It was 79.
Her death was announced in a statement by Northwestern University, to which Ms. Lurie, a trustee, had donated more than $60 million. The statement did not say where he died or specify the cause.
An only child raised in Miami by a single mother, Ms. Lurie protested the Vietnam War while in college and planned to join the Peace Corps after graduation. In interviews, she said she chased the trappings of wealth even after her marriage to Robert H. Lurie.
Mr. Lurie had built a real estate and investment empire as a partner at Equity Group Investments, partnering with a former University of Michigan fraternity brother, Sam Zell, whose portfolio included The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Cubs. Mr. Lurie owned shares in the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago White Sox.
He died of colon cancer in 1990 at the age of 48, leaving an estate worth $425 million. By 2007, Ms. Lurie had donated $277 million, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
In recognition of the care Mr. Lurie received at Northwestern University’s cancer center, the couple endowed Northwestern University’s Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center to expand its treatment and research capabilities.
After her husband’s death, Ms. Lurie was president and treasurer of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Foundation and founder and president of Lurie Investments, which helped support her philanthropic efforts.
Among her many projects at Northwestern, she created faculty positions in breast cancer and oncology research at the Feinberg School of Medicine and helped fund the 12-story Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center.
Her $100 million gift helped finance the construction of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, which replaced Children’s Memorial Hospital, where Ms. Lurie had worked as a nurse since the early 1970s. The new hospital opened in 2012.
He was also a major benefactor of the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Gilda’s Club Chicago, a cancer support organization named after Gilda Radner, who died of cancer in 1989. and the University of Michigan. In 2004, Chicago honored Ms. Lurie by naming a four-block street West Ann Lurie Place.
Known for her hands-on approach to philanthropy, Ms. Lurie also made Africa and Asia a focus. for example, he founded the Africa Infectious Disease Village Clinics in Kenya, which he supported for 12 years. While serving as its director, he often traveled there.
“The dictionary definition of philanthropy is to love and care for humanity,” she said in a 2004 interview with The Sun-Times. “People can be philanthropists even if they never hit their checkbooks. It’s about the passion you feel for those who live in deprived circumstances.”
Ms. Lurie was born on April 20, 1945. Her parents divorced when she was 4, and Ann, an only child, grew up in a Miami home with her mother, Marion Blue, a nurse, as well as her grandmother and an aunt.
Ms. Lurie enrolled in the nursing program at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She married an aspiring lawyer and graduated in 1966.
Her plan to join the Peace Corps was dashed when her husband started law school. although she was from a wealthy family, she later said, she insisted that they live on her salary as a nurse.
The couple later settled in Fort Lauderdale, where her husband started a law practice and Ms. Lurie worked as a nurse at a county hospital.
“His priorities were very different,” she told the Sun-Times, adding that her husband had used a Porsche given to him by his family. The couple divorced in 1971 and, Ms. Lurie said, “I swore to myself that I would never get involved with someone who was rich again.”
Lured by Chicago’s culture and diversity, she moved there “without knowing a soul,” she later said, and worked as a pediatric intensive care nurse at the hospital that would eventually bear her name.
She met Mr. Lurie that same year in an elevator to the laundry room of their apartment building. With his long red hair tied back in a bandana, “he looked so alternative,” Ms. Lurie said in 2004. “If he was in a suit and tie, I wouldn’t care at all.”
Although she said she had misgivings when she learned of his wealth, she learned they came from similar backgrounds — Mr. Lurie was raised by his mother in Detroit after his father died when the boy was 11 — and had similar values.
The couple had two children before they got married and then four more. Mr. Lurie was diagnosed with cancer in 1988.
Ms. Lurie married Mark Muheim, an editor and cinematographer, in 2014. She is survived by her six children, 16 grandchildren and two of her husband’s sons.
In the 2004 interview, Ms. Lurie said that she and Mr. Lurie tried to prevent their children from a life of financial sloth. “We kept the kids grounded,” he said.
They hired a minimal amount of domestic help. Mr. Lurie even insisted on mowing their lawn and plowing their driveway himself. “He liked that kind of life,” Mrs. Lurie said, “and so did I.”
