Studs Terkel -- author, broadcaster, storyteller and activist -- died Oct. 31. Many will miss his gravelly voice and equally gravelly attitude. During my seminary years in Chicago, when a corporate responsibility issue was being publicly disputed, I had an opportunity to debate one corporation's representatives on a radio program moderated by Terkel. Sometime during the radio argument over unethical sales in Third World countries, Studs silently looked at me, and out of sight of the company's executives, he clenched his hand into a fist, stuck his thumb up, and jerked it upward several times -- a signal to me to "stick it to 'em! Stick it to 'em!" I did my best then, and I never forgot his gesture. His signal told me plainly that he knew this world holds more than a few impressive, prosperous people who do desperately sinful things for the profit involved. Studs Terkel was an admirable master of humane, thoughtful resistance to such powers. For years, he signed off his radio program with an old labor movement slogan addressed to ordinary people all over the world, "Take it easy, but take it." May God bless his agnostic, righteous soul!

CLAY OGLESBEE, CANNON FALLS, MINN.