Frank McCourt

Francis McCourt (August 19, 1930 – July 19, 2009) was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Angela's Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood.

Early life and education Frank McCourt was born in New York City's Brooklyn borough, on August 19, 1930, the eldest child of Irish Catholic immigrants Malachy Gerald McCourt, Sr. (October 11, 1899 January 11, 1985), of Toome, County Antrim, who was aligned with the IRA during the Irish War of Independence, and Angela Sheehan (January 1, 1908December 27, 1981) from Limerick. Frank McCourt lived in New York with his parents and four younger siblings: Malachy Jr. (1931–2024); twins Oliver and Eugene, born in 1932; and a younger sister, Margaret, who died just 21 days after birth, on March 5, 1934. and Alphonsus, who published a memoir of his own and died in 2016. Frank McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was 11.

McCourt related that when he was 11, his father left Limerick to find work in the factories of wartime Coventry, England, rarely sending back money to support his family. McCourt recounts that eventually Malachy Senior abandoned Frank's mother altogether, leaving her to raise her four surviving children, on the edge of starvation, without any source of income. He took a boat from Cork to New York City. A priest he had met on the ship got him a room to stay in and his job at New York City's Biltmore Hotel. He earned about $26 a week and sent $10 of it to his mother in Limerick. Brothers Malachy and Michael followed him to New York and so, later, did their mother Angela with youngest son Alphie.

Writing

McCourt won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (1997) and one of the annual National Book Critics Circle Awards (1996) for his bestselling 1996 memoir Angela's Ashes, which details his impoverished childhood from Brooklyn to Limerick. Three years later, a movie version of Angela's Ashes opened to mixed reviews. Northern Irish actor Michael Legge played McCourt as a teenager. McCourt also authored 'Tis (1999), which continues the narrative of his life, picking up from the end of Angela's Ashes and focusing on his life after he returned to New York. He subsequently wrote Teacher Man (2005), which details his teaching experiences.

Many Limerick natives, including Gerry Hannan and Richard Harris, accused McCourt of greatly exaggerating his family's impoverished upbringing and hammering his mother. McCourt's own mother denied the accuracy of his stories shortly before her death in 1981, shouting from the audience during a stage performance of his recollections that it was "all a pack of lies." McCourt was defended by Limerick socialist TD Jim Kemmy, who described Angela's Ashes as "the best book ever written about working class life in Limerick". Many of his Stuyvesant High School students remembered quite clearly the mordant childhood anecdotes he continually told during sessions of his senior-level Creative Writing (E7W-E8W) elective. Reviewers in the US had high praise for his first memoir, including the literary critic for The New York Times.

McCourt wrote the book for the 1997 musical The Irish… and How They Got That Way, which featured an eclectic mix of Irish music from the traditional "Danny Boy" to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

Recognition

McCourt was a member of the National Arts Club and was a recipient of the Award of Excellerhe Irish American of the Year by Irish America magazine. In 1999, McCourt received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2002 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Western Ontario.

In October 2009, the New York City Department of Education, along with several partners from the community, founded the Frank McCourt High School of Writing, Journalism, and Literature, a screened-admissions public high school. The school is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on West 84th Street. The Frank McCourt School is one of four small schools designated to fill the campus of the former Louis D. Brandeis High School. The Frank McCourt High School began classes September 2010.

The Frank McCourt Museum officially opened by Malachy McCourt in July 2011 at Leamy House, Hartstonge Street, Limerick. This Tudor-style building was formerly known as the Leamy School, the former school of Frank and his brother Malachy. The museum showcased the 1930s classroom of Leamy School and contained a collection of memorabilia, including items such as school books of the period and old photos, all donated by former pupils of the school. As well as having a large selection of Angela's Ashes memorabilia, the museum had recreated the McCourt home as described in the book using period pieces and props from the Angela's Ashes motion picture. The downstairs of the museum housed the Dr. Frank McCourt Creative Writing centre. The museum closed in October 2019. After the success of his memoir, they lived in New York City and Roxbury, Connecticut. Friends described wife Ellen as one to encourage his writing; he started writing Angela's Ashes after they married and finished it 13 months later. After the unexpected critical and financial success of his first memoir, McCourt and his wife settled in two homes, "their two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, across the street from the Museum of Natural History. Then there's a converted barn that sits on 25 wooded acres in Roxbury, Conn."

Death It was announced in May 2009 that McCourt had been treated for melanoma and that he was in remission, undergoing home chemotherapy. On July 19, 2009, he died from the cancer, with meningeal complications,

His mother, Angela Sheehan McCourt, and father, Malachy Gerald McCourt, predeceased him, in 1981 and 1985, respectively. He was survived by his brothers Malachy, Michael, and Alphie. His last surviving brother Malachy wrote a third memoir, Death Need Not Be Fatal, at age 85 with Brian McDonald, talking of his own life, missing his brother Frank, and life after 30 years of alcoholism had ended.

McCourt's ashes were shared among his brothers, his wife, and his daughter. On July 18, 2017, eight years after his death, his daughter Maggie spread her share of the ashes in Limerick, travelling there with her two sons, Jack and Avery, and his widow Ellen McCourt. They scattered them in two places: at the ruins of Carrigogunnell Castle which overlooks the River Shannon at Clarina, a place where he rode a bicycle as a boy, dreaming of going to America; and at Mungret Abbey, where members of her Sheehan family are buried, which he mentioned to his daughter, but then said to her that it would be too much trouble to do that. Maggie did it anyway. The portion with his brothers are in an urn buried where the playwright Arthur Miller is buried, at Great Oak Cemetery, Roxbury, Connecticut. Items in the museum were auctioned in 2020, and are now on display at the People's Museum in Limerick.