Studs Terkel Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author & Oral Historian-Dies at Age 96

I have put off writing about a man like “Studs” (Louis) Terkel. I thought that perhaps someone with better ability to write would be better of writing about him. Then I realized that wasn’t who he was.

He was like my Uncle, Ernie Pyle who wrote about people like you and me. Both of them Pulitzer Prize winning authors. Who wrote about those who the world sometimes doesn’t see or hear.
With my Uncle it was service men, with Studs, your everyday, working class or middle class American.

So, Studs, here is a middle class, working woman telling the world who you were and what you meant to me. It is a roll reversal I would not have ever wanted to do, but a privilege, none the less. Hope dies last…

“Studs,” was the master of listening and speaking, a broadcaster, activist and Pulitzer Prize winning author whose best selling oral histories, celebrated the common people, like you and me, that he liked to call the “non-celebrated .”

The world lost him Friday, he was 96.

There is so much that I could say about his life, works, degrees and his accomplishments. But I find it hard to write about someone that I admired so much. Someone who survived the “Black List” of the 50′s, lost jobs and radio because of his politics. But never his friends.

Alton Miller, an associate dean of the School of Media Arts at Columbia College Chicago and a friend of Terkel’s for more than 20 years, said that Studs hoped to live to see Barack Obama elected president. He almost made it, just 4 days short. Perhaps he will stick around and see for him self if his wish came true. In my humble book, that is the best endorsement Obama has gotten so far.

Here is one of his quotes that he told AP News in 2003…to me, he was part of the group, he admired so much.

“A lot of people feel, ‘What can I do, (it’s) hopeless, well, through all these years there have been the people I’m talking about, whom we call activists … who give us hope and through them we have hope.”

Studs on his 90Th Birthday

Studs Terkel was the middle class/working class activist. He did it with simple words, talk and grace. So very many will miss him, I will be only one of the millions.

If you would like more information on Studs, Yahoo has a nice article on him as does Chicago Historical Society. Or better yet, read his books. Or listen to Bob Dylan’s “Studs Terkel’s Wax Museum.” I couldn’t find it except for bootleg.

Hope dies last…
~The Baby Boomer Queen~

Here are some great works of Studs Terkel…