Stuart McCarrell wasn’t one to trade in his progressive ideals for anything.
While others in his generation settled for retirement, Mr. McCarrell worked to pay tribute to local literary great Nelson Algren and overcame adversity to help elect the late Mayor Harold Washington.
“He really clung to his beliefs. He kept his youthful idealism,” said his friend, J.J. Jameson.
Mr. McCarrell, 77, a poet, playwright, publisher and social activist, died Thursday, Feb. 1, of a heart attack in his Wicker Park office.
Mr. McCarrell, an electrical engineer by profession, was passionate about the arts, evidenced by the 6,000 books and artwork in his apartment and the numerous plays and poems published in several anthologies. One of his plays, “Voices, Insistent Voices,” consisting of monologues by famous literary and historical figures, was staged in New York in 1996.
Mr. McCarrell, along with his friend Studs Terkel, founded the Nelson Algren Committee and was instrumental in erecting a 9-foot fountain in honor of the writer.
“We hit it off and I got to know him quite well,” Mr. McCarrell told the Chicago Tribune in 1995. “I guess I was his main baseball friend and a little bit of a drinking buddy too.”
“He almost was possessed by it,” Terkel said about Mr. McCarrell’s commitment to Algren. “Nelson Algren could have been easily forgotten, but Stuart, more than anyone else, fought to keep his memory alive.”
A former editor of two Chicago literary magazines, Mr. McCarrell began his own publishing company, Xenia Press, in 1965.
He and his friends opened an office in Ukrainian Village to help Washington’s campaign for mayor in the early 1980s. An anti-Washington group set fire to his office and beat up a campaign worker, but Mr. McCarrell never gave up.
“His generosity to his friends was only matched by his passion for great literature and his bulldog-like concern for the oppressed of every gender, race and class,” said friend and sculptor Ruth Ingeborg Andris.
Mr. McCarrell was a South Side native and Calumet High School graduate. He also served in the Army.
He opened his own firm, Macan Engineering Co., after taking several courses at DeVry Institute in the 1950s. The company was most recently known for inventing and producing dental surgical equipment.
Survivors include two sisters, Marge Caldwell and Dorthy McCarrell, and five nephews and nieces. A memorial service is being planned.
