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Studs Terkel

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Studs Terkel
Terkel speaking into a microphone
Terkel at a universal health care rally, 2007
BornLouis Terkel
(1912-05-16)May 16, 1912
New York City, New York, USA
DiedOctober 31, 2008(2008-10-31) (aged 96)
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Pen nameStuds Terkel
OccupationAuthor, Historian, Radio Personality, Actor
Alma materUniversity of Chicago (J.D., 1934)
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, 1985
SpouseIda Goldberg (1939–1999)
ParentsSamuel and Anna Finkel Turkel
Website
http://www.studsterkel.org

Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008)[1] was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for “The Good War”, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.

Early life

Terkel was born to Samuel Terkel, a Russian Jewish tailor and his wife, Anna Finkelin in New York City.[2] At the age of eight he moved with his family to Chicago, Illinois, where he spent most of his life. He had two brothers, Ben (1907–1965) and Meyer (1905–1958).

From 1926 to 1936, his parents ran a rooming house that also served as a meeting place for people from all walks of life. Terkel credited his understanding of humanity and social interaction to the tenants and visitors who gathered in the lobby there, and the people who congregated in nearby Bughouse Square. In 1939, he married Ida Goldberg (1912–1999), and the couple had one son, Dan. Although he received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1934, he decided instead of practicing law, he wanted to be a concierge at a hotel, and he soon joined a theater group.[3]

Career

A political liberal, Terkel joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project, working in radio, doing work that varied from voicing soap opera productions and announcing news and sports, to presenting shows of recorded music and writing radio scripts and advertisements. His well-known radio program, titled The Studs Terkel Program, aired on 98.7 WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997.[4] The one-hour program was broadcast each weekday during those forty-five years. On this program, he interviewed guests as diverse as Bob Dylan, Leonard Bernstein, Jean Shepherd, and Alexander Frey. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Terkel was also the central character of Studs' Place, an unscripted television drama about the owner of a greasy-spoon diner in Chicago through which many famous people and interesting characters passed. This show, along with Marlin Perkins's Zoo Parade, Garroway at Large and the children's show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, are widely considered canonical examples of the Chicago School of Television.

Terkel published his first book, Giants of Jazz, in 1956. He followed it with a number of other books, most focusing on the history of the United States people, relying substantially on oral history. He also served as a distinguished scholar-in-residence at the Chicago History Museum. He appeared in the film Eight Men Out, based on the Black Sox Scandal, in which he played newspaper reporter Hugh Fullerton, who tries to uncover the White Sox players' plans to throw the 1919 World Series.

Terkel received his nickname while he was acting in a play with another person named Louis. To keep the two straight, the director of the production gave Terkel the nickname Studs after the fictional character about whom Terkel was reading at the time—Studs Lonigan, of James T. Farrell's trilogy.

Terkel was acclaimed for his efforts to preserve American oral history. His 1985 book "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two, which detailed ordinary peoples' accounts of the country's involvement in World War II, won the Pulitzer Prize. For Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, Terkel assembled recollections of the Great Depression that spanned the socioeconomic spectrum, from Okies, through prison inmates, to the wealthy. His 1974 book, Working, in which (as reflected by its subtitle) People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, also was highly acclaimed. Working was made into a short-lived Broadway show of the same title in 1978 and was telecast on PBS in 1982. In 1995, he received the Chicago History Museum "Making History Award" for Distinction in Journalism and Communications. In 1997, Terkel was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two years later, he received the George Polk Career Award in 1999.

Later life

In 2004, Terkel received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College. In August 2005, Terkel underwent successful open-heart surgery. At the age of ninety-three, he was one of the oldest people to undergo this form of surgery and doctors reported his recovery to be remarkable for someone of that advanced age. Terkel smoked two cigars a day until 2004.

On May 22, 2006, Terkel, along with other plaintiffs, including Quentin Young, filed a suit in federal district court against AT&T Inc., to stop the telecommunications carrier from giving customer telephone records to the National Security Agency without a court order.[5]

Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far.

The lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Matthew F. Kennelly on July 26, 2006. Judge Kennelly cited a "state secrets privilege" designed to protect national security from being harmed by lawsuits.[6]

In 2006, Terkel received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award.[7]

Terkel completed a new personal memoir entitled, Touch and Go, published in the fall of 2007.[8]

Studs Terkel before his 95th birthday party at the Chicago History Museum

Terkel was a self-described agnostic,[9] which he jokingly defined as "a cowardly atheist" during a 2004 interview with Krista Tippett on American Public Media's Speaking of Faith.[10] Movie critic Roger Ebert claimed that Terkel was an atheist.[11][12]

One of his last interviews was for the documentary Soul of a People on Smithsonian Channel. He spoke about his participation in the Works Progress Administration.

At his last public appearance, in 2007, Terkel said he was "still in touch—but ready to go".[12] He gave one of his last interviews on the BBC Hardtalk program on February 4, 2008.[13] He spoke of the imminent election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, and offered him some advice, in October 2008.[14]

Terkel died in his Chicago home on Friday, October 31, 2008 at the age of ninety-six. He had been suffering ever since a fall in his home earlier that month.[15]

In 1998, Terkel and WFMT, the radio station which broadcast Terkel's long-running program, had donated approximately 7,000 tape recordings of Terkel's interviews and broadcasts to the Chicago History Museum. In 2010, the Museum and the Library of Congress announced a multi-year joint collaboration to digitally preserve and make available at both institutions these recordings, which the Library of Congress called, "a remarkably rich history of the ideas and perspectives of both common and influential people living in the second half of the 20th century." "For Studs, there was not a voice that should not be heard, a story that could not be told," said Gary T. Johnson, Museum president. "He believed that everyone had the right to be heard and had something important to say. He was there to listen, to chronicle, and to make sure their stories are remembered."[16]

Selected works

  • Giants of Jazz (1957). ISBN 1-56584-769-5
  • Division Street: America (1967) ISBN 0-394-42267-8
  • Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) ISBN 0-394-42774-2
  • Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974). ISBN 0394478843
  • Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (1977) ISBN 0-394-41102-1
  • American Dreams: Lost and Found (1983)
  • The Good War (1984) ISBN 0-394-53103-5
  • Chicago (1986) ISBN 5-551-54568-7
  • The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (1988) ISBN 0-394-57053-7
  • Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (1992). ISBN 978-1-56584-000-3
  • Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It (1995) ISBN 1-56584-284-7
  • My American Century (1997) ISBN 1-59558-177-4
  • The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With Those Who Make Them (1999) ISBN 1-56584-633-8
  • Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith (2001) ISBN 0-641-75937-1
  • Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times (2003) ISBN 1-56584-837-3
  • And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey (2005) ISBN 1-59558-003-4
  • Touch and Go (2007) ISBN 1-59558-043-3
  • P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening (2008) ISBN 1-59558-423-4

References

  1. ^ Rick Kogan (31 October 2008). "Studs Terkel dies". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2008-11-13.
  2. ^ Williamn Gramies (31 October 2008). "Studs Terkel, Listener to Americans, Dies at 96". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-11-17.
  3. ^ Ammeson, Jane. "Storytelling with Studs Terkel". Chicago Life.
  4. ^ Sisson, Richard (2007). The American Midwest: an interpretive encyclopedia. Indiana University Press. p. 498. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
    Previous Terkel radio work included WENR (1944 'Wax Museum'), WCFL (beginning November 30, 1947). A TV show ('Stud's Place' beginning November, 1949) lasted to 1951.
  5. ^ American Civil Liberties Union : Author Studs Terkel, Other Prominent Chicagoans Join in Challenge to AT&T Sharing of Telephone Records with the National Security Agency
  6. ^ Judge Drops Studs Terkel NSA Lawsuit
  7. ^ Studs Terkel to receive first Dayton literary prize
  8. ^ Terkel records life in a 'Touch and Go' way - USATODAY.com
  9. ^ Jay Allison; Dan Gediman (eds.) (2006). This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. ^ Speaking of Faith: Studs Terkel on Work, Life, and Death
  11. ^ Ebert, Roger (2008-10-31). "To Studs: With love and memories". Chicago Sun-Times.
  12. ^ a b Kogan, Rick (2008-10-31). "Studs Terkel dies". Chicago Tribune.
  13. ^ "Studs Terkel". BBC News. February 4, 2008. Retrieved April 1, 2010.
  14. ^ Edward Lifson (November 23, 2008). "Studs for Obama". Huffington Post.
  15. ^ American prize-winning author Studs Terkel dead at 96 at Wikinews
  16. ^ Library Collaborates with Chicago History Museum to Preserve Radio Icon Studs Terkel's Historic Recordings
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