WATERVILLE – Studs Terkel, a common man who rose from the Depression-era streets of Chicago to give voice to the everyday people that helped defend and rebuild a nation, is the 2004 recipient of Colby College’s Lovejoy Award for journalism.

The 92-year old Terkel is recovering from a fall and was unable to attend the 52nd annual Lovejoy Convocation at Colby’s Lorimer Chapel on Sunday night. He did, however, speak to the gathering by video.

In the video, Terkel expressed his disappointment at not being able to attend the convocation. He praised Colby for its dedication to the freedom of speech and its embrace of Lovejoy’s enduring principles. He described the award as a profound honor.

“I can think of no one more honorable than Elijah Lovejoy,” said Terkel. “To win the Elijah Lovejoy Award, even the award itself recalls another time, and the time of Elijah Lovejoy is the time when someone spoke out against the mob. I accept this award in his name.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis “Studs” Terkel learned the ways of the world from the tenants who gathered in the lobby of his family’s hotel on the west side of Chicago during his youth in the 1920s. The hotel was located in the city’s Bughouse Square area, a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed and religious fanatics of many persuasions, according to his official biography.

His award-winning books are based on his extensive conversations with Americans from all walks of life. The books chronicle the profound and often tumultuous changes the country experienced during the 20th century. Terkel has dedicated much of his career to giving ordinary Americans a voice and in celebration of the dignity of work.

The Lovejoy Award is presented annually to honor courageous contributions to the country’s journalistic achievement and to those who defend the freedom of the press. It is also a memorial to Elijah Parish Lovejoy, a Colby graduate and abolitionist who was America’s first martyr to the free press.

Studs Terkel began working in radio in the 1930s, at first playing music and later interviewing performers and other people that interested him. He also pursued acting, playwriting, sportscasting and film narration. He began writing books in the 1950s that detailed the histories of the many characters he encountered through his work and travels. He wrote books on the Depression, World War II, race relations, the American Dream and aging.

“His oeuvre is everyday life writ large,” was how newspaper columnist Laura Washington described his work.

In the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, Terkel was blacklisted for signing petitions and for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. When told by his employer that communists were behind the petitions, Terkel replied: “Suppose communists come out against cancer. Do we have to come out for cancer?”

Terkel won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Good War,” published in 1985. He has written more than a dozen books. He also is the recipient of the Irita Van Doren Book Award, two National Book Award nominations, the Presidential National Humanities Medal, the National Medal of Humanities, the Illinois Governor’s Award for the Arts, the Clarence Darrow Commemorative Award and has been cited by the Friends of Literature for his “unique contributions to the cultural life of Chicago.”

His work in radio has been honored with the Prix Italia, three Ohio State Awards, three Major Armstrong Awards and the George Foster Peabody Award.

Author Alex Kotlowitz attended Sunday night’s banquet and accepted the Lovejoy Award on behalf of Terkel. Kotlowitz is a veteran Chicago journalist who has written books about social justice and race and is considered an heir to the Terkel tradition.

“Studs taught us how to listen and showed us that there’s poetry in the stories of everyday people,” said Kotlowitz. “His work and his friendship have inspired. He’s an American treasure.”

Elijah Parish Lovejoy was born in Albion in 1802 and graduated from Waterville College – now Colby College – in 1826. A Presbyterian minister and staunch opponent of slavery, Lovejoy was the publisher of the Alton Illinois Observer, a newspaper that supported the Anti-Slavery Society of Illinois. His writing so enraged slaveholders that on Nov. 7, 1837, an angry mob set fire to a warehouse where the Observer’s new press was stored and gunned down Lovejoy as he attempted defend it. He was buried on his 35th birthday.

The story of Lovejoy and the abolitionists has been heralded as the story of the enduring vigil for freedom of thought, speech and the press. The mob action at that warehouse in Illinois is viewed as the first, but unrecorded, battle of the Civil War.

Ann Marie Lipinski, editor of the Chicago Tribune and a member of the Lovejoy Award selection committee, noted that “Studs Terkel’s memory is an archive of nearly 90 years of social history, some of which he made, much of which he chronicled.”

Terkel was selected by a committee of distinguished newspaper editors chaired by Matthew Storin, retired editor of the Boston Globe; Greg Moore, managing editor of the Denver Post; Rena Pederson, editor at large of the Dallas Morning News; Rebecca Corbett, Washington enterprise editor of The New York Times; and Colby College President William D. Adams.