All of us at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless are mourning Studs
Terkel, who died at home Friday at age 96. Always a personality, the
acclaimed writer and interviewer was a longtime friend of the
coalition, and a good pal to our late executive director, John
“Juancho” Donahue.

In fact, Studs got the title of his 2003 book -- Hope Dies Last -- from Juancho.

Juancho was profiled in the book: His early work as a priest on
Chicago’s Southwest Side. Ten years ministering and living in a
squatters community in Panama. And Juancho’s years back in Chicago,
raising five beloved children with his wife, Chelin, and working as an
activist for homeless people in Chicago.

Juancho loved Studs’ book, but laughed when he told us that Studs took
some license with the title -- even though Studs credited Juancho with
coming up with that title.

If the title was based on his outlook, Juancho said, it should have been called “Hope Never Dies.”

Obituaries are remembering Studs as a Pulitzer Prize-winning oral
historian, a longtime radio and TV interviewer, and a bona fide
rabble-rouser who toughed out McCarthy-era blacklists. A WBBM-TV report
reminds people that Studs joined with the Chicago Coalition for the
Homeless, in 1999, to protest fencing off Lower Wacker Drive from the
homeless people who sought refuge there.

The tributes include a piece by London’s Guardian Newswire. It calls
Studs Terkel the “Voice of America’s uncelebrated” -- a perfect title,
we think, for one impressive life.