Ann Lurie, nurse and later philanthropist, has died at the age of 79

Ann Lurie, a self-described hippie who became one of Chicago’s most famous philanthropists, including donating more than $100 million to a hospital where she once worked as a pediatric nurse, died on Monday. She was 79 years old.

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 she died or give a specific cause of death.

Ms. Lurie grew up in Miami as an only child of a single mother. While in college, she protested against the Vietnam War and planned to join the Peace Corps after graduating. In interviews, she said she continued to chafe at the benefits of wealth even after she married Robert H. Lurie.

Mr. Lurie had built a real estate and investment empire as a partner in Equity Group Investments with a former University of Michigan fraternity brother, Sam Zell, whose portfolio now included The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Cubs. Mr. Lurie owned shares in the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago White Sox.

He died of colon cancer in 1990 at age 48, leaving behind a fortune worth $425 million. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Ms. Lurie had donated $277 million by 2007.

In recognition of the care Mr. Lurie received at Northwestern University Cancer Center, the couple endowed the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University to expand its treatment and research capabilities.

Following her husband’s death, Mrs. Lurie served as president and treasurer of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Foundation and founder and president of Lurie Investments, which supported her charitable efforts.

Her many projects at Northwestern University included establishing professorships in breast cancer research and oncology at the Feinberg School of Medicine and co-funding 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 replaced Children’s Memorial Hospital, where Ms. Lurie had worked as a nurse since the early 1970s. The new hospital opened in 2012.

She 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 has also placed Africa and Asia at the heart of her work, for example, she founded the Africa Infectious Disease Village Clinics in Kenya, which she supported for 12 years, traveling there often during her tenure as director.

“The dictionary definition of philanthropy is loving and caring for humanity,” she said in a 2004 interview with The Sun-Times. “People can be philanthropists even if they never fill their checkbook. It’s about the passion you feel for those who are living in need.”

Ms. Lurie was born on April 20, 1945. Her parents divorced when she was four, and Ann grew up as an only child in a Miami home with her mother, Marion Blue, a nurse, as well as her grandmother and an aunt.

Mrs. Lurie enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville to study nursing. She married an aspiring lawyer and graduated in 1966.

Her plan to join the Peace Corps was thwarted when her husband began law school. Although he came from a wealthy family, she insisted that the two live off her salary as a nurse, she later said.

The couple later settled in Fort Lauderdale, where her husband opened a law firm and Mrs. Lurie worked as a nurse at a county hospital.

“His priorities were completely different,” she told the Sun-Times, adding that her husband drove around in a Porsche his family had given him. The couple divorced in 1971, and Ms. Lurie said she “vowed to myself that I would never get involved with anyone rich again.”

Attracted by Chicago’s culture and diversity, she moved there “without knowing a soul,” as she later said, and worked as a pediatric nurse in the intensive care unit of 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 his long red hair tied back with a headscarf, “he looked so alternative,” Ms. Lurie said in 2004. “If he had been wearing a suit and tie, I wouldn’t have been interested at all.”

Although she had concerns when she learned of his wealth, she learned that the two came from similar backgrounds – Mr. Lurie was raised by his mother in Detroit after his father died when the boy was 11 – and shared similar values.

The couple had two children before marriage and then four more. Mr. Lurie was diagnosed with cancer in 1988.

Ms. Lurie married film editor and cinematographer Mark Muheim in 2014. He is survived by her, her six children, 16 grandchildren and her husband’s two sons.

In the 2004 interview, Ms. Lurie said she and Mr. Lurie had tried to steer their children away from a life of money and idleness. “We kept the kids grounded,” she said.

They hired only a minimum of household help. Mr. Lurie even insisted on mowing the lawn and clearing the driveway himself. “He loved that lifestyle,” Mrs. Lurie said, “and so did I.”