Francis "Frank" McCourt died he was 78

Francis "Frank" McCourt died he was 78, McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, best known as the author of Angela's Ashes.

His brother Malachy McCourt, a former radio host, is also an actor and autobiographical writer. Together they created the stage play A Couple of Blaguards, a two-man show about their lives and experiences.

(19 August 1930 - 19 July 2009)

Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of seven children of Malachy (died 1985) and Angela McCourt (died 1981).^[1]Unable to find work in the depths of the Depression, the McCourts returned to their native Limerick, Ireland in 1934, where they sank deeper into poverty. ^[2] McCourt's father, an alcoholic who was often without work, drank up what little money he earned. When McCourt was eleven, his father left with other Irishmen to find work in the factories of wartime Liverpool. He sent little money to the family, leaving Frank's mother to raise four surviving children. After quitting school at the age of thirteen, Frank alternated between odd jobs and petty crime in an effort to provide for his mother, and three surviving brothers, Malachy, Michael (who now lives in San Francisco), and Alphonsus ("Alphie") (who lives in Manhattan). The three other siblings died of diseases related to malnutrition and the squalor of their surroundings. Frank McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was ten.^{[citation needed]} In Angela's Ashes, McCourt described an entire block of houses sharing a single outhouse, flooded by constant rain, and infested with rats and vermin.^{[citation needed]}

At age nineteen, he left Ireland returning to the United States where, after a stint working in New York City's Biltmore Hotel, he was drafted and sent to Germany. Upon his discharge from the army, he returned to New York City, where he held a series of jobs.

He used the G.I. Bill to enroll in New York University, from which he ultimately graduated. After receiving a Master's degree from Brooklyn College in 1967, he taught English at McKee High School and Stuyvesant High School in New York City (where he joined the American Federation of Teachers). He retired after thirty years.

He received the Pulitzer Prize (1997) and National Book Critics Circle Award (1996) for his memoir Angela's Ashes (1996), which details his impoverished childhood in Limerick. He also authored 'Tis (1999), which continues the narrative of his life, picking up from the end of the previous book and focusing on life as a new immigrant in America. Teacher Man (2005) detailed the challenges of being a young, uncertain teacher.

McCourt was a member of the National Arts Club and was a recipient of the Award of Excellence from The International Center in New York.

In 2002 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Western Ontario. That same year he was also awarded the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award.

Frank McCourt lived with his wife Ellen in New York City and Connecticut. He had a daughter, Maggie, with his first wife, a granddaughter, Chiara, and two grandsons, Frank and Jack.

It was announced in May 2009 that he had been treated for melanoma and that he was in remission, undergoing home chemotherapy.^[3] On 19 July 2009, he died from the disease, with meningeal complications, at a hospice in Manhattan.^[4]