Remembering Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Frank McCourt

By his own admission, Frank McCourt complained that the hours he devoted to teaching high school kept him from his writing. But by all accounts, it was also what helped him nourish, shape and hone the voice he would later use to narrate Angela’s Ashes (Scribner, 1996), the book for which he received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for biography. In fact, even after obtaining a master’s degree in English at Brooklyn College in 1967, the Brooklyn-born and Irish-bred author continued to teach in New York City public schools until he retired in 1987. McCourt passed away on Sunday, July 19, 2009, after battling melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. He was 78.

"The Brooklyn College family is deeply saddened by the passing of distinguished alumnus and author Frank McCourt," said Brooklyn College President Christoph M. Kimmich.

A gifted storyteller inside and outside the classroom, McCourt lived 15 bleak years in Limerick, Ireland, where his parents fled to escape from the Great Depression after struggling for five years in New York and failing to achieve the better life they had hoped for.

After making his way back to his native Brooklyn, McCourt took several odd jobs before obtaining a bachelor’s degree in English education from New York University. It was only after he retired from teaching, however, that he started writing his now famous childhood memoirs.

"I learned about the significance of my insignificant life," he told a crowd of students in 1997.

An epic of woe, Angela’s Ashes describes in stoic prose the author’s childhood in Ireland, where his mother, Angela, had to struggle to support her four children after McCourt’s father abandoned the family. Although he penned two other books, ’Tis (Scribner, 1999) and Teacher Man (Scribner, 2005), neither replicated the success of Angela’s Ashes, which sold four million hardback copies, was a bestseller for two years, and was made into a movie by British director Alan Parker in 1999.

As an active member of the Brooklyn College Alumni Association, McCourt "generously gave his time to talk with students and alumni about his career and his life," Kimmich noted.

The teacher-turned-writer was awarded the BCAA Alumnus of the Year Award in 2000 at the alumni association’s Gala Millennium Reunion. "His acceptance speech was as poignant as it was funny," said Marla Schreibman, director of alumni affairs.

McCourt was the first writer in the Brooklyn College Common Reading Program, organized in 2004 by the English Department and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies. 

"McCourt spoke to our freshmen and signed more than 600 copies of Angela’s Ashes the day he was on campus," recalled Professor Ellen Tremper, chairperson of the English Department. "An inspired choice for inaugurating the program, the wonderful student memoirs it inspired were published in our first collection, Telling Our Stories/Sharing Our Lives."

In spring 2007, McCourt accepted an invitation to participate in Brooklyn on My Mind for a one-on-one interview with Leonard Lopate, which aired live from the Walt Whitman Auditorium. "It was the best-attended event of the series," Tremper said. 

Despite his success, McCourt never tired of coming back to his alma mater to share his stories and experiences as a teacher and a writer.

"Brooklyn College was at once the most demanding and the most rewarding educational experience of my life," the late author once gratefully remarked.