May 16th, 2012by Russell Lewis Filed under: Stories
On May 16, 2002, the Museum hosted a celebration in honor of Studs’s 90th birthday. Photograph by John Alderson
Today is Studs Terkel’s birthday—happy birthday, Studs—he would have been 100 years old. Studs loved to tell people he was born in 1912—“the Titanic went down and I came up.” Few nonagenarians can match Studs’s legacy: more than 5,500 audiotapes of his radio programs and another 1,200 oral history interviews for his books that encompass all aspects of creativity, discovery, and the human spirit.
Blogger’s note: This is the first of several blog posts about members of Chicago’s magic community who helped with our upcoming exhibition Magic.
Last month Chicago magician Danny Orleans and his daughter, Leah, spent the day with us at the Museum. We’re developing an exhibition on the history of Chicago magic, and who better to advise us than talented and successful local magicians?
Danny and Leah Orleans at the Chicago History Museum Photograph by John Russick
Danny and Leah performed a host of magic tricks that day. We filmed them over and over for a multimedia program we’re developing that tells the story of a young girl who discovers the true nature of magic. In the program, Danny’s hands represent the seasoned magician and magic shop owner, Lou. And Leah’s represent Greta, a girl who thinks she can become a magician overnight. In the story, Greta learns that the shop is a magical place with secrets of its own.
Capturing the magic on film Photographs by John Russick
We’re extremely grateful for Danny and Leah’s help and guidance as we developed this piece. In fact, much of Chicago’s magic community has been extremely generous to us, and we thank everyone who lent a hand.
As part of CHM’s Studs Terkel Center for Oral History, we’ve started an initiative called the Chicago Cold War Oral History Project. Five of us, two staff members and three interns from DePaul University’s public history program, have researched, conducted, and transcribed interviews about the Cold War’s impact on Chicago.
This global conflict affected the city hugely through its residents. Many people living here fled communist dictatorships. Others settled in this area as refugees from wars spawned by conflicts between the Soviet Union and the United States. Thus far, we have interviewed people from Bosnia, Ethiopia, Latvia, Russia, and Serbia. We have also talked with members of the US military, the Communist Party of the United States, an artist and peace activist, and many others.
Chicago has long been known as the second largest Polish city, after Poland’s capital Warsaw. This past February former Polish President Lech Wałęsa visited Chicago to receive the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation’s Lincoln Leadership Prize. At that time, the Foundation arranged for me to interview President Wałęsa as part of our Cold War project.
Lech Wałęsa, from pennant commemorating his first visit to Chicago, 1989
