He also was a great actor, playing one fabulous Studs Terkel. Just last week, my son and I caught some of “Eight Men Out,” the movie about the 1919 Black Sox scandal. In it, Terkel played sports writer Hugh Fullerton, who played a prime role in exposing the efforts of eight members of the Chicago White Sox to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Terkel was wonderful in the part. I turned to my son and said, “He is perfect in this movie.” The reason is simple: Terkel's Fullerton was Terkel's Terkel, a persona which was, at the same time, street-wise and idealistic, profound yet simple.

No doubt being a Chicagoan born, raised, and living in a certain era contributed to who Terkel became. A certain cynicism was probably inevitable in any Chicagoan surrounded by the common corruptions of machine politics. Yet, like grass growing through cement, Terkel also seemed, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, to continue to harbor hope that human beings can do better.

Mark Daniels