Ann Lurie, one of Chicago’s most prolific philanthropists, dies at 79

Imbued with the spirit of doing good while growing up as the only child of a single mother in Florida, Ann Lurie would, in a most energetic and self-effacing fashion, become one of the most prolific philanthropists in the history of this city.

Her name and that of her husband Robert, who died in 1990, are affixed most prominently to Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. But there have been dozens of other beneficiaries in Chicago and across the world, fueled by Robert’s success in business but also by Ann’s deeply altruistic nature.

“When I was young, my mother encouraged me to ‘do a good deed daily,’” she said some years ago. “Following her advice as a teenager gave me a great deal of personal pleasure, and now, many years later, it still feels good.”

Lurie, 79, died early Monday in Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where she had been under hospice care for some time. She was suffering from glioblastoma. Over her last weeks she had been visited by members of her small circle of close friends and by her family: her husband, filmmaker Mark Muheim, and her six adult children from her marriage to Robert along with their partners and children.

Ann Lurie born in Florida, the only child of Marion Elizabeth Blue, a Canadian who worked as a nurse. Her father abandoned the family when Ann was four and she was raised in a middle-class Miami household by her mother, grandmother and an aunt. Obviously influenced by her mother’s profession, she aspired to a career in nursing, which she began to pursue at the University of Florida on scholarship.

Her intention was to use her skills with the Peace Corps in underprivileged countries. But she married during her junior year of college, and her scholarship required her to work in Florida for at least four years. Her husband was the scion of a wealthy family and drove a Porsche,  but Ann insisted the couple live on her nurse’s salary while he finished law school.

He did but the marriage ended in divorce and in 1973 Ann moved to Chicago, though she had never visited the city and knew not a soul. She was captured, she would say, by the city’s energy and beauty.

She was working the demanding job of pediatric intensive care nurse at Children’s Memorial Hospital and living in a Lincoln Park high rise when one night in the elevator she met a man named Bob Lurie.

He was a charming and distinctive looking 31-year-old, with bushy hair and a substantial mustache. He was also well on his way to becoming wealthy as the business partner of real estate magnate Sam Zell. The two men met as undergraduates and fraternity brothers at the University of Michigan, where they began managing off-campus apartment housing. Several years after college, they joined forces in Chicago, and, together, built what became Equity Group Investments and its many offshoots.

She was shadowed by the troubles of her first marriage, telling Cheryl Reed of the Sun Times, “I vowed to myself that I was never again going to get involved with anyone who was wealthy.”

But she and Lurie clicked. They lived together for two years and after the birth of two children, they married and moved to a larger home in the suburbs, where they would have four more children, raising them in both Long Grove and Winnetka.

In 1986, the couple established their family foundation and became what they called “low-key philanthropists,” giving away up to $100,000 a year.

The next year, Bob was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. He fought it but died on June 20, 1990, at 48, leaving his wife, their six children and an estate worth $425 million.

“He was,” Ann would often say, “my best friend and my soulmate.”

For a time, Ann struggled with understanding her husband’s finances and investments — even, she told people, buying the book “Accounting for Dummies” — and also with the emotional demands of her kids, then ages 5 to 15.

But she would play a hands-on part in managing the family resources as president of Lurie Investments, a financial holding company, and do a spectacular job of putting her money to powerful use.

It would take many pages to catalog the manifestations of her largesse. Here is but a sampling: $100 million to the 23-story, 288-bed Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago; $40 million for the Robert H. Lurie Cancer Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital; and millions of dollars to her late husband’s alma mater, the University of Michigan, for its Robert H. Lurie Engineering Center.

Before his death, she and her husband had drawn up a detailed philanthropic template for Ann to follow that was divided into six categories: medical services and research; child-related medical organizations; basic services including food and shelter; education; the arts; and so-called “wild things.”

Implementing and expanding that template, Ann transformed an interest in giving into a career as a philanthropist.

She gave $5 million to the Greater Chicago Food Depository; founded and provided major funding to Gilda’s Club, Chicago; funded the activities of Paws Chicago; sponsoring theater productions as well as a music and dance performances; underwrote an archeological dig in Egypt; started a Chicago spay and neuter clinic; gave $10 million to build and maintain the 2.5 acres of gardens in Millennium Park; endowed a $1 million chair for breast cancer research at Northwestern University in the name of Princess Diana, whom Lurie hosted during the princess’ only visit to Chicago three months before her death in 1996.

Especially dear to Lurie was the African country of Kenya, where she found “peace and tranquility” and worked for years overseeing an infectious disease clinic she founded. She also donated more than $4 million to establish a nursery school and contributed to 20 “Save the Children” schools in Ethiopia.

In addition to her philanthropy Lurie enjoyed the company of a small circle of friends. As difficult as it was for someone leading a high profile public life, she managed to keep an admirably low profile. Though not shy, was reserved and understandably suspicious of those who aggressively sought her attention.

At a filming for a promotional video for the American Association for Cancer Research, she met filmmaker Mark Muheim.

In short order, they became a committed couple. Six years later, on the day after Christmas in 2014, they were married at the home  Ann owned in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

They were joined in the outdoor ceremony by two friends, a local judge who officiated and their dog, Sophie. “It was short and sweet,” Lurie told Crain’s reporter Shia Kapos. “It was perfect for us. It wasn’t a big to-do.”

The next decade was devoted to traveling with friends and spending time in Wyoming with her husband, while also spending a week every month in Chicago, where the couple lived in a handsome Gold Coast condominium.

Ever a private person, her illness was kept a secret from all but those closest to her.

Lurie was the recipient of many honorary degrees from such institutions as Erikson Institute, University of Florida, University of Michigan and Northwestern University. A four-block-long street — formerly 42nd Place — was named Ann Lurie Place in recognition of her generosity to the nearby Greater Food Depository.

Lurie is survived by her husband, three sons, three daughters and a number of grandchildren.

Services are pending.