That's the way it was

In 1966 I was watching the news in my Marin County apartment with my close friend and roommate, Lawrie Driscoll. We were both twenty. We watched CBS, of course. As far as I knew, everyone watched CBS. Finally, Lawried said that if Cronkite looked into the camera and said, “Lawrie, get me a cup of coffee, will ya,” he’d just head for the kitchen.

It wasn’t such an odd thing to say. Walter Cronkite was indeed the most trusted man in America. If he said it was so, it was so. When he came home from a tour of Viet Nam and declared that war unwinnable, Lyndon Johnson moaned to his staff that if they had lost Cronkite, they had lost the the American people ... and he was right!

It was a different time. Cronkite didn't start on a talk show and move up to the news, he made his journalistic bones reporting under fire in WWII Europe, later joining the extraordinary team led by Edward R. Murrow. They provided structure for the relatively new medium of broadcast journalism. Their integrity, passion, and devotion to professionalism were unquestionable.

Cronkite reported two of the most important events of the 1960s. Firs, of course, was the assassination of President Kennedy. I can see him now, sitting in his shirtsleeves in the newsroom, relating events to the viewers as they occurred. When he got confirmation of the president’s death through an earphone, he reported it calmly, glancing at the clock to note the East coast time. He paused for a moment – two seconds, no more – to get his own emotions in check, and then went on talking.

The second occasion, thankfully much lighter, was the day we landed on the moon. He was almost giddy with excitement. Cronkite had followed the space program closely, was on intimate terms with the people and the science, but still could barely believe it. “We’re on the moon,” he said, almost laughing.

When Cronkite retired, his seat went to Dan Rather, a tough, experienced reporter. There was no one better for the post. Rather did his best, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again.

Walter Cronkite, 1916 - 2009