Walter Cronkite

What's WRONG? At CLUB DEAD, The bell tolls for Walter Cronkite, the Most Trusted Man In America, dead at 92 at his New York home, following a long illness. He didn't just bring us the news, he was family, the gentlemanly uncle we all admired.

Walter Cronkite's words resonate in the memory of anyone alive on November 22, 1963.

"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1pm Central Standard Time, 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 30 minutes ago.".

America remained glued to the television for next few days, watching Cronkite. It was his words, his demeanor, that told us we would survive; we would move ahead.

Walter Cronkite was our witness to the events which shaped our lives. All the mileposts which defined the path of the world are permanently embedded with our memories of hearing Walter describe them.



It was Cronkite who, disillusioned with the American presence in Vietnam, publicly called for an end to the war. It's probably an exaggeration to say he ended Lyndon Johnson's Presidency. He was far from the first public figure to decry the war. War protests had become so commonplace as to attract little attention. Yet there's no way to know the nature of Johnson's plans when, after watching Walter's broadcast, he turned to his advisors and said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

It was Cronkite who spoke to an already racially polarized nation on April 4, 1968, and told them the sobering news that America's best hope for the peaceful advancement of civil rights lay dead in a Memphis hospital. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been silenced by a sniper's bullet, and no one could know what lay in store.


It was Walter Cronkite who later that year, dared to call the Chicago security officers "thugs" as they roughed up correspondent Dan Rather on the floor of the Democratic national convention.

And it was Cronkite, 40 years ago this week, who was there when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren walked on the moon.

Walter Cronkite started at the very bottom, as a newsroom 'gofer,' as he described it, going for cigars, egg rolls, whatever the reporters needed. He cut his teeth in Kansas City in the days when Boss Prendergast ran the city. He went to war, came home, fell in love with and married Betsy. He worked his way up to the CBS newsroom in New York, and in 1962, was tapped as the replacement for Douglas Edwards on the evening newscast.

As a boss, he never asked a correspondent or editor to do anything he hadn't done himself. He edited his own copy, and in the days before teleprompters, scribbled story notes to himself. He talked to us. He was not the lofty soothsayer proclaiming the great truth. He was a friend, someone we could trust.

Frequently, polls showed him to be the most trusted man in America, The nickname stuck. His singsong delivery and signature closing "And that's the way it is..." were quoted and parodied by all, including Johnny Carson.



He was witness to America's darkest days: the Cold War, Vietnam, race riots, the energy crisis, Three Mile Island, the Iran hostages. He told us of the murder of a young President. He brought us through the trying days of the two administrations which followed: Lyndon Johnson, whose albatross was the war in Southeast Asia, and Richard Nixon, whose term ended like none before, collapsing under the weight of its own paranoia.

Walter was also with us through our finest hours: conquering the moon, bringing peace, albeit temporarily, to the middle east, and standing tall on July 4, 1976 as America rose to celebrate its Bicentennial with pageantry like had never before been seen.

Against his instincts, Cronkite left the CBS Evening News anchor desk in 1981, a casualty of CBS' policy of mandatory retirement at age 65. He was disappointed to learn he would no longer be anchoring specials, political conventions, and breaking news events; duties which he believed he would be able to continue after foregoing anchor duties.


He watched as television news became a hodgepodge of rumor, opinion and sculpted, homogenized content. It was no longer information; it was product. Young people sought to be news reporters, but not to report the news, not to seek the truth, but because it was a way to be on television.

His personality was certainly the greater part of the giant figure he became. Dan Rather once said we wasn't sure if a movie could be made of Cronkite's life, for no actor could be found who could portray his combination of grace, dignity, and integrity.

And that's the way it is.


Then again, screw him, he's dead. Let's go look for crocodiles.

StevenK