Re: Chicago's own 'Studs' Terkel dies

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: : : Chicago Icon 'Studs' Terkel Dies : : : Pulitzer Prize-winning author was 96. : : : : CHICAGO -- Studs Terkel died Friday afternoon at his home on the North Side of Chicago. : : : Despite success, his program was pulled off the air in the 50s. It was the peak of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's anti-communist "Red Scare," and Terkel went on record deploring McCarthyism. : : : "I got in trouble because I signed all kinds of petitions. I always say, 'I never met a petition I didn't like.' I got in trouble and didn't work for a while," he recalled. : : : He returned to radio but it was as an author that he made his ultimate mark, becoming the country's pre-eminent oral historian. : : : In book after book he celebrated the quiet courage and hard work of ordinary Americans, celebrating the uncelebrated men and women of this country. : : : "What's it like to be a certain person in a certain circumstance at a certain time?" he told Marin. : : : He contrasted rich and poor along the same Chicago street in the 1966 novel "Division Street: America," explored the Depression in 1970's "Hard Times" and chronicled how people felt about their jobs in the 1974 novel, "Working." : : : His highly acclaimed book The Good War, chronicled the lives of American GI's. : : : "What's it like to be a little kid, who's a mama's boy, hitting the shores of Normandy in 1944?" Terkel said of the work. : : : Nearly 40 years later, in 1985, The Good War was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. : : : On his 90th birthday, the City of Chicago honored him. : : : "If you hang around long enough on this planet, anything is possible," Terkel said. : : : He wrote 18 books. His last, titled Touch and Go was his own memoir: a final chapter after a truly astonishing life. : : : "Here's my epitaph: Curiosity did not kill this cat." : : : His son, Dan Terkel issued a statement through colleague and close friend Thom Clark. : : : "My dad led a long full eventful, sometimes tempestuous, but very satisfying life," Terkell said, describing his father's death as "peaceful, no agony. This is what he wanted." : : : : : (NBC5) : : It was Sen. Joseph McCarthy, not Eugene. Different guy. : Gotta love it. Stop replacing editors with interns!

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