Richard J. Egan, 1936-2009
No. 22605 Richard J. Egan
Wikipedia: Richard J. Egan (1936 – August 28, 2009) was an American engineer, businessman, political fundraiser and US Ambassador to Ireland.
Richard J. Egan
Ambassador, Ireland
Term of Appointment: 08/30/2001 to 01/31/2003
Richard J. Egan was sworn in as Ambassador to Ireland on August 30, 2001. Ambassador Egan presented his credentials to the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, at Áras an Uachtaráin, Dublin, on September 10, 2001.
Mr. Egan is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of EMC Corporation, an S&P 500 company that is the world’s leading supplier of intelligent enterprise storage and retrieval technology.
Mr. Egan was born in Milton, Massachusetts, and grew up in the Dorchester section of Boston. In 1953, following graduation from Boston Technical High School, Mr. Egan joined the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as a helicopter crew chief during the Korean conflict. He began college studies at Northeastern University in Boston in 1956, earning a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1961. He began his professional career in Honeywell’s Data Processing Division as a design engineer specializing in computer storage systems. In 1963 he undertook graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the same time joined MIT’s Draper Laboratory as part of the team that developed the Apollo Guidance Computer. Mr. Egan continued his business career while working with Lockheed Electronics, directing his own company Cambridge Memories, Inc., and managing Intel’s Commercial Systems Division.
In 1979, Mr. Egan co-founded EMC, starting with six employees, including himself. EMC Enterprise Storage systems, software products, and services are the leading information access and storage solutions for every major computing platform today. In 2000, Industry Week magazine put EMC on their list of the “World’s 100 Best Managed Companies” for the third straight year.
In 2001, Fortune magazine named EMC one of the “100 Best Companies to Work for in America.” The company employs more than 26,000 worldwide and has manufacturing and design centers in Massachusetts, Colorado, Israel, France and Ireland.
Mr. Egan is a dynamic leader in the educational, business and high-tech communities. He has served as Director of the Massachusetts High Technology Council and Business Roundtable. He is a member of the Governor’s Economic Council in Massachusetts and of the U.S. Department of Commerce Transition Advisory Council. Egan is founder of the Hopkinton Technology for Education Foundation and serves as trustee for the Inner City Scholarship Fund, Northeastern University and the Catholic Schools Foundation. He has received honorary degrees from Northeastern University and the New England Institute of Technology. He is a director of Cognition Corporation, a trustee of the Catholic Schools Foundation, Northeastern University, the Inner City Scholarship Fund, a past Director of the New York Stock Exchange Advisory Board, and member of the Semper Fidelis Society.
Inc. Magazine named him “1994 Master Entrepreneur of the Year” and he has been one of Irish America Magazine’s “Top 100” for the past several years.
In addition to his private sector and high tech leadership, Mr. Egan has been an active member of his community. Mr. Egan’s and EMC’s major philanthropic activities include improvement of schools and universities, support to health care institutions, and assistance to the community on dozens of other issues.
From Inc. magazine 1994
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19941201/3218.html
Dick Egan grew up in a three-decker (middle floor) on Minot Street, in St. Brendan’s Parish in Dorchester, in what was then (in the 1940s) Boston’s Irish ghetto. He had his own room, and so did his sister, but his parents slept in the dining room. The family therefore ate meals in the kitchen, at a wobbly table that made Egan feel ashamed as a small boy. When he finally got a job at a cobbler’s shop (“I started as a shoeshine boy, then I worked on women’s heels, then I went to men’s heels, and eventually I did soles”), the first thing he bought with his own money was a present for his mother and father: a chrome dinette set with padded vinyl upholstery. The second thing he bought, for himself, was a radio. “I loved that goddamn radio,” he says.
Egan’s father worked as a meatcutter at Cifrino’s supermarket, right behind the house. Paul Cifrino was also the landlord, and when he chose to erect a maintenance building next to the supermarket, he took away the Egans’ backyard. Egan had lots of jobs while he was growing up, one after another, sometimes overlapping, until, he says, “work became a habit.” He delivered newspapers. The route was huge, traversing three parishes, and every day after he finished, he stood on the corner of Adams Street and Gallivan Boulevard, in front of the Eire Pub, and sold the extras. He fixed cars. He was a bundle boy at Cifrino’s and later a cashier, and later, briefly, a meatcutter like his father. (“They start you off with chickens, then you go to pork, then you go to steaks, and the hardest job is boning a chuck.”) At home there were always chores: every night, he filled the furnace in the basement with coal; he carried kerosene upstairs to the kitchen stove. (“You had to flip it fast so it wouldn’t spill.”) But the chore he detested most — even more than fetching his father from the barroom on Friday afternoons — was delivering the rent money to the supermarket on the first of every month.
He did it because his mother made him, but he hated it, hated the long climb up the stairs to Cifrino’s office, hated the condescending way the staff looked him over once he got there, hated most of all how scrawny and insignificant he was made to feel. Like a “dead-end kid,” he says, “like you see in some of those old movies.” Egan never forgot that feeling. Years later, after he’d become a millionaire many times over, he tried to buy the supermarket from Cifrino’s son (ostensibly to help a friend in the catering business). He went there himself to make his offer, found Paul Jr. sitting in the same palatial office above the store where the elder Cifrino once sat, told him who he was (Cifrino had no idea) and what he wanted — and was refused. “I hope the place blows up with you in it,” were Egan’s parting words. “Take it with you to the grave.”