AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS

199 – Saturday, July 18, 2009

“And THAT’s the way it is!” Those trustworthy words were heard at our house every night as a precursor to prime time family television and accompanied me from my youth through adulthood and well into middle age. Walter Cronkite was the iconic network anchor man, even though before ‘Uncle Walter’ there had been some famous readers and talking heads. But there would only be one of his imposing stature in all my remembrance – he was the trusted authoritative voice of world news to the ordinary man. All America listened intently as Cronkite did the play-by-play on the civil rights movement, liaised with NASA to take us to the moon and back, grieved with the nation as he helped us through the Kennedy assassination trauma, showed us, first hand, the battle fronts and atrocities in Viet Nam – he was the stalwart bearer of the history of our modern America. Someone once said of him, “In my younger days, there was God, Dad and Cronkite, and Walter is the only one I never struggled with.” In a way, I understand what the source of this quote meant – he was a trustworthy mouthpiece, not a rambling purveyor of rhetoric in the current styles of today’s news staffers, but in an enigmatic class all his own – defined, fabricated and personified by him completely – probably the reason he has schools of broadcast journalism named after him, news awards bearing his moniker, and has earned his pedestal in the ‘News Hall of Fame” (if there is such a place). He has been honored by NASA as their spokesperson and inundated him with accolades and awards innumerable. I am moved at the announcement of his death on Friday. At 92, ‘Mr. C’ had rubbed elbows with more celebrity figures, interviewed more prominent politicians and international citizenry, and shared more historical tidbits with the world than any other broadcast journalist - ever. The television news world will never feature another singular embodiment of the individual broadcaster qualities equal to a Walter Cronkite, but that’s just the way it is!!

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