Studs Terkel, legendary Chicago writer and radio voice, is cruising down Lake Shore Drive with me, in the back of my friend Laurie’s light blue 1988 Mazda 626, telling me about the greatest generation, the atom bomb and hope.
Then the cellular gods decide the 89-year-old Studs has better things to do, and my phone goes dead. “Discharging …” the screen reads.
Discharging? I’m talking to Studs Terkel, the epitome of story-gathering greatness, and my phone is discharging? Panic descends, shrieking included. Another cell phone is shoved in my hands. I dial. Busy. Dammit. One more try. Ringing – elation. Panic lifts.
“Studs?” I say. “Are you there?”
“Ahh, got cut off there,” he says. Just that, and then he launches into a story about FDR’s second inaugural address, asking me if I know about the New Deal and if I’m “getting all of this.”
Indeed, I am getting all of this, even as I continue to twist through the streets of Chicago toward Uptown, Studs’ home for so long that people tend to forget he was actually born in New York. My friends and I are on our way to a performance by Scrap Mettle SOUL, an Uptown community theater group that gathers stories from the neighborhood, much as Studs has done in Chicago for the greater part of the last century.
We arrive, and I end the conversation with Studs. As I hang up the phone, I reflect on my 45-minute unexpected trip through history.
When I called Studs before leaving campus for the performance, my plan was to set up an interview time with him for later in the weekend – but the legend was overwhelmed.
“Can we do this in June?” he asked. “I’m just ready to pop.”
He is speaking tonight at the In These Times 25th anniversary event at Hothouse, 31 E. Balbo St., and Chicago will celebrate his 90th birthday next week. After canceling one appointment for the weekend, Studs didn’t want to make another. But, he said, “We can talk now.”
Now? I panicked at the thought. A man with 45 years worth of interviewing experience for WFMT and a Pulitzer Prize wanted to talk to me, and I wasn’t sure exactly what to say.
But I didn’t have to say much. Studs, calling himself “pretty deaf,” couldn’t hear most of my questions, so he just talked while I listened. Before I knew it, Studs was helping me overcome what he calls “the national Alzheimer’s disease,” America’s tendency to forget its past.
“You know about the Great Depression?” he wanted to know. I told him, yes, I know about it. Satisfied, he moved on to World War II, the atom bomb and the Cold War before pausing to reflect.
“You know that phrase, ‘the greatest generation’?” he asked me, referring to the title of Tom Brokaw’s 1998 book praising the generation that came of age during the Great Depression and World War II.
“There is no ‘greatest generation.’ Each generation faces its own challenges. (Saying that,) they’re putting down the 1960s.”
And Studs will not stand for people putting down the generation that he believes fundamentally changed American life. The energy of 1960s youth seemed to transcend time as he talked to me about the Civil Rights Movement, the feminist movement and union organizing.
“I never met a petition or picket I didn’t like,” he said. Remembering my NU ties, Studs told me about a talk he had in the late 1960s with Eva Jefferson, the first black female president of NU’s Associated Student Government. On May 6, 1970, Jefferson led 2,000 students in a protest against the Vietnam War on Deering Meadow. Jefferson was one of the “kids … speaking out against injustice” that Studs so admired then – and continues to admire today.
“Here’s one thing that gets me: What is education about? To compete? Is that why you go to school?” No, said the tone of his voice. “It’s to become a richer person, to enrich the community.
“The students who do things, take part against sweatshops, they give me hope,” he said.
And hope is occupying Studs’ attention these days. His latest book is tentatively titled “Hope Dies Last.” On the phone, Studs recounted the story of the first time he heard the words, from a migrant worker he interviewed during Cesar Chavez’s farm workers’ rights movement in California.
Later that night, I hear the story about “Hope Dies Last” again, from a young actor playing Studs in the Scrap Mettle SOUL show. The actor is not a professional but instead an Uptown resident who would rather bring the story of Studs to life than sit in the audience. It makes me think of something the real Studs told me on our ride to Uptown.
“In the midst of all this bleakness, there are hopeful signs,” he said of the world’s current disarray. “We’ve got to take part in our society. We can’t be spectators.” nyou
