Ann Lurie, nurse who became a leading philanthropist, has died at the age of 79

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

Her death was announced in a statement from Northwestern University, to which Ms. Lurie, a trustee, had donated more than $60 million. The statement did not say where she died or what caused her death.

Ms. Lurie, an only child raised in Miami by a single mother, protested the Vietnam War while in college and planned to join the Peace Corps after graduation. In interviews, she said she chafed at the trappings of wealth even after marrying Robert H. Lurie.

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

He died in 1990 at age 48 of colon cancer, leaving an estate valued at $425 million. According to The Chicago Sun-Times, Mrs. Lurie had donated $277 million as of 2007.

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

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

Her many projects at Northwestern included establishing chairs in breast cancer research and oncology at the Feinberg School of Medicine and funding the 12-story Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center.

Her $100 million gift helped fund the construction of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, which replaced Children’s Memorial Hospital, where Mrs. Lurie had worked as a nurse from 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 Mr. 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, she founded Africa Infectious Disease Village Clinics in Kenya, which she supported for 12 years. While she was director, she traveled there frequently.

“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’ve never cashed their checkbooks. It’s about the passion you have for people who are disadvantaged.”

Mrs. Lurie was born on April 20, 1945. Her parents divorced when she was four, 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 fell through when her husband went to law school. Although he came 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 Mrs. Lurie worked as a nurse at an area hospital.

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

Drawn by Chicago’s culture and diversity, she moved there, “not knowing anyone,” 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 in their apartment building. ​​With his long red hair tied back in a bandana, “he looked so alternative,” Ms. Lurie said in 2004. “If he had been in a suit and tie, I wouldn’t have been interested at all.”

Although she said she had doubts when she learned of his wealth, she discovered that they had 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 married, and four more afterward. Mr. Lurie was diagnosed with cancer in 1988.

Ms. Lurie married Mark Muheim, a film editor and cinematographer, in 2014. He survives her, as do her six children, sixteen grandchildren and her husband’s two sons.

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

They hired minimal housekeeping. Mr. Lurie even insisted on mowing their lawn and plowing their driveway himself. “He liked that kind of lifestyle,” Mrs. Lurie said, “and so do I.”