Studs Terkel October 31, 2008

I first heard of Studs Terkel driving back from Purdue University in the late 1970s. Always an insomniac I had stopped by to visit friends on one of my regular trips northward from Indianapolis to my home in East Gary, Indiana (okay Lake Station). I was listening to this very late night talk show on one of the Chicago AM radio stations, some guy named Larry King. Studs was on talking about his book Working. I was struck by his eloquence, his admiration for the common man, his focus on historical context. When I started working in Chicago in the mid-1980's, having thrown in the towel on the conservative Indianapolis, many of my sensibilities were informed by those of Studs. A show man. An intellect. He would share his outrage at the many injustices he saw around him in the city that he loved. He attributed years later to his ego, but he would not put his activism or his beliefs aside in the 1950's only to find himself black listed during the McCarthy period. He wore this as a badge of honor.
Some of the negligible few that read this will know that I was largely raised by my maternal grandparents, Willard and Bessie Silverthorn. They were FDR Democrats through and through. In many ways I was raised in a bit of a time warp - the stories I grew up with were the stories from the 1930's and 40's. So it was then that I read with great attention Stud's book from 1970, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. Studs as was his master craft selected a careful cross section of eye witnesses to the Great Depression, from a farmer in Iowa, to a member of FDR's cabinet, and to a Pullman railroad worker that went on to encourage Martin Luther King Jr's activism and would hire as his secretary. Rosa Parks, while working at the NAACP.
Studs was far from one of those dour harbingers of despair and disappointment. His sense of humor and his spirit were indefatigable surpassed only by his creativity. Not so many years ago, Sonia and I were driving home from Chicago listening to WBEZ FM radio and they were replaying one of Stud's radio programs from the 1960's which was a satire on modern culture - where the author, played by one of his assistants, was describing her work. Hillarious, inventive, delightful, even though it made an important point, the entertainment value was what shined through.
Studs stayed on in Chicago and contined to be a voice of justice and reason, never taking himself too seriously and never missing an opportunity for some grand display of his wisdom and understanding of the human condition, nor missing an opportunity to lampoon our collective sillyness and irrationality. Studs was Chicago. And Chicago was better for it. We were all blessed that he was afforded such a long and productive life. God rest ye merry gentleman. You live on in your words and your spirit.