Louis Terkel arrived here as a child from New York City and in Chicago found not only a new name but a place that perfectly matched--in its energy, its swagger, its charms, its heart--his own personality. They made a perfect and enduring pair.
Author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol Louis "Studs" Terkel died Friday afternoon in his home on the North Side. At his bedside was a copy of his latest book, "P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening," scheduled for release this month. He was 96 years old.
"Studs Terkel was part of a great Chicago literary tradition that stretched from Theodore Dreiser to Richard Wright to Nelson Algren to Mike Royko," Mayor Richard M. Daley said Friday. "In his many books, Studs captured the eloquence of the common men and women whose hard work and strong values built the America we enjoy today. He was also an excellent interviewer, and his WFMT radio show was an important part of Chicago's cultural landscape for more than 40 years."
Beset in recent years by a variety of ailments and the woes of age, which included being virtually deaf, Terkel's health took a turn for the worse when he suffered a fall in his home a few weeks ago.
Video
Related links
Reaction to the death of Studs Terkel at 96
Mary Schmich: Truly, the end of an era
Get exerpts from his Terkel's web site
Studs Terkel turns the page Photos
Terkel's books
Giants of Jazz - 1957
Division Street: America - 1967
Hard Times - 1970
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do - 1974
Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times - 1977
American Dreams: Lost and Found - 1983
The Good War - 1984
Chicago - 1986
The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream - 1988
Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession - 1992
Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who've Lived It - 1995
My American Century - 1997
The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With Those Who Make Them - 1999
Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith - 2001
Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times - 2003
And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey - 2005
Touch and Go - 2007
P.S.: Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening - 2008
Remembering Studs Terkel Video "My father lived a long, satisfying and fulfilling but tempestuous life," his son, Dan Terkel, said Friday. "It was a life well lived."
It is hard to imagine a fuller life.
A television institution for years, a radio staple for decades, a literary lion since 1967, when he wrote his first best-selling book at age 55, Louis Terkel was born in New York City on May 16, 1912. "I came up the year the Titanic went down," he would often say.
He moved with his family a few years later, when they purchased the Wells-Grand Hotel, a rooming house catering to a wide and colorful variety of people. He supplemented the life experiences there by visits to Bughouse Square, the park across the street from the Newberry Library that was at the time home to all manner of soapbox orators.
"I doubt whether I learned very much [at the park]," Terkel wrote. "One thing I know: I delighted in it. Perhaps none of it made any sense, save one kind: sense of life."
He attended the University of Chicago, where he obtained a law degree and borrowed his nickname from the character in the "Studs Lonigan" trilogy by Chicago writer James T. Farrell. He never practiced law. Instead, he took a job in a federally sponsored statistical project with the Federal Emergency Rehabilitation Administration, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal agencies. Then he found a spot in a writers project with the Works Progress Administration, writing plays and developing his acting skills.
I always like his work!
