Self-chosen epitaph: "Curiousity didn't kill this cat!"

"Studs Terkel"
November 2, 2008

Julia and I did our customary watching of the CBS Sunday morning show, where we learned the death of Studs Terkel. I used to listen to him back in the early eighties via Chicago's WMFT radio broadcasts. His fiesty, exuberant spirit was a joy. As the TV featured snippets of Terkel, I knew his was a face I wanted to sketch.

The Chicago Tribune has the most comprehensive news story about Studs, along with a photo gallery.

Roger Ebert said, "Studs has an insatiable appetite for people and the things they do, and may have read as many books as anyone alive." That's the curiousity! It went into everything he did as a 'author-radio host-actor-activist'. As the Chicago Tribune reports, he "didn't merely conduct interviews. He engaged in conversations. He was interested in what he was talking about and who he was talking to." That same curiousity propelled him into writing eighteen books.

I assembled my sketch screen from a photo accompanying his last interview and one from the Tribune collection:

Wiki features other quotes of his. "The older you are, the freer you are, as long as you last." Studs Terkel at age ninety-five

One of the captions to a photo in the Chicago Tribune, "Terkel reacts to news that he won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize. "I guess this proves that if you stick around long enough, anything can happen," he said."