A BILLIONAIRE who set himself the task of spending his handsome fortune before his death, and changed the face of education in Limerick and across Ireland in doing so, passed away this past Monday (October 9) at the age of 92 having achieved his incredible goal.
Charles ‘Chuck’ Feeney was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1931. The son of Irish-American parents, with roots in County Fermanagh, he was a pioneer of the ‘duty free’ shopping concept, founding the Duty Free Shoppers Group (DFSG) in 1960 with his college classmate Robert Warren Miller.
Over the course of his illustrious career, Mr Feeney amassed a personal wealth in excess of $8billion (€7.5bn) using his impressive business acumen to build an empire of more than 420 DFSG locations worldwide.
However it is what he did with that fortune that Mr Feeney will be best remembered for.
Not just a pioneer in retail, the benefactor billionaire was also a forerunner of the ‘Giving While Living’ movement, which called on the world’s wealthiest to donate their fortunes to good use while they are still alive, rather than by bequeathing to foundations after their deaths.
Among the many causes Mr Feeney chose to give generously to were the drive for peace in Northern Ireland, the abolition of the death penalty in the US, the modernising of the public health system in Vietnam, and, closer to home, the University of Limerick (UL).
Through his foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies – which put a large focus on providing funding to education, health, social, gay and lesbian equality, and politically left-leaning public policy causes – Mr Feeney gifted in the region of €150m to UL over a period of decades.
In March of this year, UL named its main thoroughfare after him (‘The Feeney Way’) to celebrate the “transformative impact” he had on the university.
His ‘Giving While Living’ manifesto was to prove an inspiration for fellow moguls like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the latter of whom once said of him: “Chuck’s been the model for us all. If you have the right heroes in life, you’re 90 per cent of the way home. Chuck Feeney is a good hero to have.”
Before achieving his goal of giving away his earthly fortune in 2017, Mr Feeney gifted more than €1.3bn in philanthropic support to an array of political, educational, and social causes in Ireland, including UL, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, and NUI Galway, as well as Queens University Belfast, the Irish Hospice Foundation, Barnardos, and the HSE. He also funded the Sinn Féin office in Washington after the 1994 IRA ceasefire.
According to his biographer, Conor O’Clery, his stock reply to why he gave away his vast fortune to good causes was simply: “It was the right thing to do.”
Despite his lavish generosity, Mr Feeney was known to have lived frugally in his personal life. He was famed for his $15 Casio F-91W watch and was widely reported to have owned neither a car nor a home in his later years, often opting to carry his personal effects in a plastic bag rather than a briefcase.
Paying tribute to Mr Feeney after receiving the news of his death on Monday, UL president Professor Kerstin Mey expressed sorrow on behalf of the university “at the loss of one of the most giving of men”.
“As the son of Irish American parents, maybe it is no surprise that over €1billion of philanthropic support went to Ireland,” she said.
“At its simplest, the University of Limerick campus, over 18,000 students and 2,000 staff, would not have been possible were it not for Chuck Feeney’s generosity.”
Mr Feeney is survived by his wife Helga, five children (from his first marriage to Danielle Feeney) Juliette, Caroleen, Leslie, Diane, and Patrick, 16 grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and a wide and grateful network of friends and admirers.
