In , at the age of 46, Bob Lurie was living a happy comfortable life. An engineering graduate of the University of Michigan with a master's degree, he deviated into the real estate arena with his college friend Sam Zell. Together they built successful careers in real estate and diversified investments.
Bob had a devoted wife and six young children who were the focus of his love and attention. Life changed for the Luries when Bob was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. Without treatment, Dr. Steve Rosen speculated that cancer would take his life within six months. Bob fought a valiant fight. She sponsors 5 musicians who perform with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training arm of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For nearly twelve years beginning in , Ms. Since , Ann has funded 3 medical missions to Mulago National Referral Hospital in Uganda to treat Kenyan children with severe heart disease.
Skip to main content. Ann Lurie. Previous Hans Koch. Not only will Lurie and her late husband's name be visible on the story building, her fingerprints will be on just about everything else.
Lurie brought in a party planner for the gala April 20, her birthday. She securedBombardier Inc. She tasted the hors d'oeuvres. And it is her voice that guests will hear on an audio tour guiding them through select areas of the new hospital. When she recorded the tour, producers said her voice, slightly monotone, wasn't "bouncy" enough. The script, she said, read like a year-old wrote it and included lines she would never say, such as, "You've got to see this! In the end, Lurie compromised. Her voice will sound more "sing-songy" than usual.
But she made a few edits to the script. She has become known for a very hands-on approach. Lurie aims for her gifts to be a tipping point, a spark that draws additional donors and generates momentum to get a project done.
As a girl, she could be moved to tears if someone looked at her askance. Now, at nearly 67, sitting in a pristine conference room in her River North office with her wispy blond hair pulled back in a butterfly clip, Lurie is not shy about sharing her opinion. She describes herself as "curious" and "stubborn. Lewis Landsberg, the Irving S. Cutter professor of medicine and dean emeritus for the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She consults widely, thinks very carefully about it and makes her own decisions.
Happiness ripped apart. Lurie was raised an only child by "pretty hearty" Canadian women — her mother, Marion Blue, her aunt and grandmother — who had settled in Florida. Her father became persona non grata in their lives when she was 4, a reality she struggled with for many years. When she enrolled in the University of Florida, intent on following her mother's footsteps and becoming a nurse, her mother discouraged it. Nursing was tough emotionally and physically, and her mother feared it would be hard on sensitive Ann.
Ann studied nursing anyway. She married in her junior year, but it didn't last. They were too young, Lurie said. Her husband was ambitious, and afterward she decided that men driven toward wealth and acquisition didn't suit her. With his Bozo the Clown-style kinky red hair, as she calls it, Bob didn't look rich the day they met in , riding down their building's elevator to do their laundry.
After glancing at her Triumph key chain, he mentioned that he, too, used to drive a British sports car, an MG. Then he asked her to help him sort his laundry. Bob, also divorced, was a shy engineer and problem solver content to let Zell travel and do deals while he figured out how to make the numbers work.
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