Studs Terkel

Posted November 3, 2008, 5:49 pm


Studs Terkel
Born: May 16, 1912
Died: October 31, 2008

Pulitzer Prize-winning author, actor, historian, and broadcast personality best known for his series of oral histories of common Americans.

After The Age of Seventy

• At age 73, won the 1985 Pultizer Prize for The Good War, which challenged the prevailing notion that, in contrast to the Vietnam War era, World War II was a time of unblemished national solidarity, goodwill, and unified purpose.
• Hosted his hourlong Chicago radio show, The Studs Terkel Program, every weekday for 45 years, until he was 85.
• At age 85 (1997), elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
  
• At age 89 (2001), published the oral history Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
• At age 91 (2003), published the oral history Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times
  
• At age 93 (2005), published the oral history And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey
• At age 93 (2005), underwent successful open-heart surgery -- 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.
• At age 94 (2006), received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's first-ever, Lifetime Achievement Award.
• At age 95 (2007), published a memoir, Touch and Go, which was chosen as a best book of 2007 by the Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, and Playboy.
• At age 96 (2008), published the oral history P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening
  

Quotes:

• "But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count."
  
• "Take it easy, but take it." For years, the sign-off line on his WFMT radio show.
• "The older you are, the freer you are, as long as you last."
• I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it."
• That's what we're missing. We're missing argument. We're missing debate. We're missing colloquy. We're missing all sorts of things. Instead, we're accepting. "
  

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