Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)
Tonight, America has lost an icon.
Walter Cronkite, the former CBS newsman and one-time Houstonian that was once billed "the most trusted man in America", passed away this evening at the age of 92.
A native of St. Joseph, Missouri, Cronkite -- the son of a dentist of remote Dutch ancestry, hence the original surname "Krankheyt" -- grew up in Kansas City and later moved to Houston at the age of ten, where he worked for student newspapers attending San Jacinto High School in Houston and the University of Texas at Austin. While Cronkite eventually dropped out of college, his career continued to march on.
After stints in Oklahoma City and Kansas City -- where he met his future wife, the former Betsy Maxwell, Cronkite joined the United Press in 1937 covering World War II battles, the Nuremberg trials, and the Soviet Union while serving as the organization's main reporter in Moscow for two years. Cronkite was recruited by Edward R. Murrow to join CBS News in 1950, and for the next three decades served in a number of roles for the network, including news presenter, documentary host and even game show host (It's News to Me). In one of his earlier roles at CBS, his presence at the Democratic and Republican conventions in the 1952 presidential election that elected Dwight Eisenhower led to the coinage of the term "anchor".
The term "anchor" came in handy on April 16, 1962, when Cronkite took over Douglas Edwards' chair on the CBS Evening News. Despite the wealth of experience Cronkite brought to the table, throughout the 1960s his newscast was often surpassed by The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC. As CBS developed a reputation of being more accurate in its presentation of the news, fortunes changed and as the 1960s drew to a close, the CBS Evening News surpassed The Huntley-Brinkley Report in viewership.
Many of America's most enduring and breathtaking moments of the 20th Century came during his tenure at CBS. Some of the more noteworthy news stories included space missions including Apollo 11 and Apollo 13, full-blown scandals by the likes of Watergate, foreign policy adventures including the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War, and one of America's darkest events that unfolded on November 22, 1963, when Cronkite uttered these words:
"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: "President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time." 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago."- Walter Cronkite, November 22, 1963
In 1981, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded to Cronkite, a man who became so much a part of the American lexicon that it even found its way into even CBS programs that had virtually nothing to do with the news, such as All in the Family, where protagonist Archie Bunker referred to the anchor as "Pinko Cronkite" at times. That same year, Cronkite retired from his anchor chair on March 6, 1981 at the age of 65, which at the time was the prerequisite for mandatory retirement at CBS. In his farewell, Cronkite gave his audience a look into what the future held for him:
"Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away; they just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981."- Walter Cronkite
For the most part, I do not remember much of Cronkite, for I was never alive during his time as anchor of the CBS Evening News. However, looking at current events from decades ago -- whether in print, on TV or online, and looking at how Cronkite presented the story as it broke, it was clear that he lived up to his reputation as "the most trusted man in America". While there have been thousands of journalists -- mainstream and independent -- that have left an indelible mark in the minds of their viewers, Cronkite has left behind an unsurpassed legacy in the realm of American journalism, and judging by the current state of the news media -- whether it is as liberal as MSNBC and the New York Times or as conservative as Fox News and The Wall Street Journal -- it is almost impossible to find trust in today's media, which explains a major reason why I run this blog: to offer my own unfettered perspective of the world around me. In short, while there are millions like yours truly who present their own perspectives of the news and thousands who work for America's largest news sources, there will never be another Walter Cronkite.
Walter Cronkite may be gone, but he definitely will not be forgotten...And that's the way it is: Friday, July 17, 2009.