Chuck feeney first wife
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The Chuck Feeney I Know.
I am sometimes asked, as Chuck Feeney’s biographer, what he is like as a person, and why he gave all his money away. His stock reply to the latter question is, “It was the right thing to do.” Of course there is more to it than that.
I first saw Chuck Feeney at a White House party to celebrate St Patrick’s Day in 1994. He was there as one of a group of unofficial American peacemakers on Northern Ireland. He looked rather embarrassed. Nobody could tell me much about him, other that he was very rich, though he was reputed to travel economy class and wear a plastic watch.
Years later I was introduced to him in New York. He began inviting me to lunch in PJ Clarke’s bar on 3rdAvenue. He liked to keep informed about Irish and American politics, and as North American editor of The Irish Times I could converse with him on both. It was always chicken hotpot and a glass of cheap white wine and wisecracks with the waiters.
Over time I got to know that he had become very wealthy selling duty-free goods worldwide and was a big-time anonymous philanthropist.
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Chuck Feeney — a celebration of his life
From the Irish Times, December 10, 2023. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times
Chuck Feeney was a tenacious, empathetic and inexhaustible man with an impatience for self-importance and a fundamental drive to invest in people’s talents, a memorial to the late Irish-American billionaire philanthropist has heard.
Dozens of Mr Feeney’s family members gathered in Dublin’s Trinity College diningroom on Saturday night to remember the man who spent the last four decades of his life giving his billion-dollar fortune away.
“He was sort of a Robin Hood to the people,” Patrick, Mr Feeney’s son, told attendees at Saturday night’s event organised by his father’s foundation The Atlantic Philanthropies.
“Others saw him as a bit of a rebel and a peacemaker, some saw him as a sort of freedom fighter like Che Guevara. Other people thought he had taken a vow of poverty like Mother Teresa.”
Mr Feeney, who died in October aged 92, was an Irish-American who made his fortune as a worldwide retailer of luxury goods.
By the time of his death, he had donated
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Chuck Feeney
Irish-American businessman and philanthropist (1931–2023)
"Charles Feeney" redirects here. For the baseball executive, see Chub Feeney.
Charles Francis Feeney (April 23, 1931 – October 9, 2023) was an Irish-American businessman and philanthropist who made his fortune as a co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Group, the travel retailer of luxury products based in Hong Kong. He was the founder of the Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the largest private charitable foundations in the world. Feeney gave away his fortune in secret for many years, choosing to be anonymous, and donating more than $8 billion in his lifetime.
Early life and education
Feeney was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on April 23, 1931, during the Great Depression, to Irish-American parents.[1][2] His mother was a hospital nurse, and his father was an insurance underwriter.[3] His ancestry can be traced to County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland.
As a youth, Feeney worked selling Christmas cards door-to-door, as a golf caddy, and shoveling snow from driveways.&#
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