BIO: Frank McCourt was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, NY, to Irish immigrant parents -- his mother, a Sheehan from Limerick, and his father, a McCourt from Co. Antrim. Frank's autobiography, "Angela's Ashes" won the coveted Pulitzer prize in 1997. He is also the author of "The Irish...And How They Got That Way", 1998, and " 'Tis, A Memoir," about Frank's later experiences on his return to NY, published in 1999. Although born in Brooklyn, Frank was to grow up in squalid poverty in the Limerick slums upon the family's return to Ireland; sadly, he lost several siblings to malnutrition and illness. For over thirty years Frank McCourt has taught in various NYC high schools, including Stuyvesant, and at city colleges. He has lived with his wife, Ellen, in NYC and CT. Frank's younger brother, Malachy McCourt is an entertainer and author in his own right. Malachy noted, "A man could never receive enough honors, prizes, paludits, and degrees to make up for the pain of the early years." Frank might answer, as he writes on the opening page of his tender "Angela's Ashes" -- "It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while." On the last pages of "'Tis," he writes: "When your mother is dead you can't be sitting around and looking mournful, recalling her virtues, receiving the condolences of friends and neighbors. You have to stand before the coffin with your brothers Malachy and Alphie and Malachy's sons, Malachy, Conor, Cormac, link arms and sing the songs your mother loved and the songs your mother hated because that's the only way you can be sure she's dead, and we sang... "A mother's love is a blessing No matter where you roam, Keep her while she's living You'll miss her when she's gone" - and "Goodbye, Johnny dear, when you're far away; Don't forget your dear old mother Far across the sea, Write a letter now and then And send her all you can And don't forget where'er you roam That your're an Irishman." Frank wrote, "Visitors look at each other and you know what they're thinking. What kind of mourning is this where sons and grandsons sing and dance before the poor woman's casket? Don't t! hey have any respect for their mother? We kiss her and I place on her breast a shilling I had borrowed from her long ago and when we walk the long corridor to the elevator I look back at her in the coffin, my gray mother in a cheap gray coffin, the color of beggary." Frank recalled that his father at one point had left them with high hopes of sending the family money from England, he had remembrances of his mother by the fire waiting for the money that never came and having to beg from the St. Vincent de Paul Society and memories of his brothers asking if they could please have one more cut of fried bread. In August of 1985, Frank's father died and was buried in Belfast. Frank brought his mother's ashes from NY to her last resting place, the graveyard at Mungret Abbey outside Limerick City. "We took turns dipping our fingers into the tin urn from NJ crematorium and sprinkling Angela's ashes over the graves of the Sheehans and Guilfoyles and Griffins. We said a Hail Mary and it wasn't enough. We had drifted from the church but we knew that for her and for us in that ancient abbey there would have been comfort and dignity in the prayers of a priest, proper requieum for a mother of seven." "All this was your doing, Dad, and even if we came out of it, your sons, you inflicted a life of misfortune on our mother," wrote Frank about his father's funeral. "I could only kneel by his coffin again and recall mornings in Limerick when the fire glowed and he talked softly for fear of waking my mother and brothers, telling me of Ireland's sufferings and the great deeds of the Irish in America. We buried him the next day on a hill overlooking Belfast. The priest prayed and sprinkled the coffin with holy water, even as shots rang out somewhere in the city. "They're at it again," someone said."