Irene pollin biography

If you’ve lived in the Washington, DC, area for a while, you probably think you know who Irene Pollin is: half of the team, with her late husband, Abe, who built the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, and the Verizon Center in DC, and brought three pro sports teams to town.

People in other parts of the world are more likely to know her as the founder of Sister to Sister, the first organization dedicated to women’s heart-disease prevention and education, or as a psychotherapist who pioneered therapy for people with chronic illnesses.

Her new memoir, Irene & Abe: An Unexpected Life, is about all those things, and about the deaths of two of her children, a double tragedy that set her on several of the courses her remarkable life has taken.

Her son Jay Jay and her daughter, Linda, both suffered from congenital heart defects. Jay Jay died when he was a toddler. Linda lived with heart problems until she, too, died at the age of 16, s