Remembering “Uncle Walter”

A frequent dinner guest in my family’s household passed away Friday.

Walter Cronkite, the CBS television journalist for whom the term “anchorman” was coined, died at the age of 92. He was the anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, an era that took my family from the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, to the Vietnam War, the first moon landing, and Watergate.

Cronkite told the story straight, showing no liberal or conservative bias, collecting all the facts before airing the piece. He was an avuncular man whom my parents would depend on if they wanted their news as simple as round steak, mashed potatoes and gravy.

In the 1960s and early ‘70s, my siblings and I served as the remote control for the family television. While cooking dinner, Mom would say, “Go turn on Walter.” Not the “CBS Evening News.” Not “Walter Cronkite.” Just “Walter.” As we ate dinner, we would watch battle scenes in Vietnam, civil rights marches, even the Beatles while “Walter” explained everything like a grandfather sitting in his favorite chair smoking a pipe and telling a story.

Cronkite rarely used jargon in his stories. He also rarely showed emotion. There were two instances I remember when his veneer of objectivity cracked slightly. The first happened on November 22, 1963, when he announced from the news wires that President Kennedy died from an assassin’s bullet in Dallas. The second was when the Apollo 11 lunar module landed on the moon. His “Oh, boy!” spoke volumes even when he later said he was “speechless.”

Cronkite also seldom gave his opinion, which is an unspoken rule among journalists. But when he did a short commentary in 1968 about the stalemate that was the Vietnam War after his visit to the war zone, his 30-second piece caused shock waves in the White House. President Lyndon B. Johnson reportedly said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

I was embarking on my own journalism career while working in the news department of UC Davis radio station KDVS in 1981 when Cronkite put down the mike for the last time. I was sad that he was stepping down from the CBS Evening News. But even the “Most Trusted Man in America” needed a break.

Cronkite set the standard by which many journalists, including myself, strived to achieve. And these days, news coverage is so fragmented that unbiased journalism is hard to come by. Yet I’m glad Cronkite was there to guide us through the turbulent times with as steady a hand as he steered his sailboat. Rest in peace, Uncle Walter.

Writing Diva