SOURCE: "Mike Royko: Columnist, Curmudgeon, Character," Washington Post, April 29, 1997, pp. C1, C4.

[In the following obituary, Kurtz observes that while times changed, Royko remained the same—except for his house in the suburbs and country club membership.]

He was cantankerous, soft-hearted, infuriating, earthy, bull-headed, funny. He was loved. He was hated. He was read.

Mike Royko, who died Tuesday at 64, was more than a Chicago legend, more than a throwback to the days when columnists smoked, drank, hired legmen and chased dames. He was a writer who made people mad, a rarity in today's buttoned-down, ironically detached, cappuccino-sipping journalistic culture.

For me, the shock a couple of years ago was visiting Royko in his airy third-floor study, not on the gritty Windy City streets where he made his name but in the leafy suburb of Winnetka. There were backporch swings and deer playing on an endless lawn that...