DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Richard Egan, who rose from street kid to the U.S. ambassador to Ireland after making millions of dollars founding data storage giant EMC Corp., died Friday after a battle with lung cancer, the Associated Press reported.

Egan, 73 years old, was an electrical engineer and a former U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilot who worked at Lockheed Martin, Honeywell and Intel before he co-founded data storage technology provider EMC in 1979. He sold most of his shares in the tech boom, shortly before the bubble burst.

Complete report: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBIT_EGAN?SITE=TXDAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=HOME.html&CTIME=2009-08-28-21-50-43