He led us to Saigon, to Jonestown, to Selma, to Attica.
He took us around the planet and he showed us to the moon.
As anchorman of the "CBS Evening News," Walter Cronkite - who died Friday at age 92 after a period of failing health - not only narrated a tumultuous era in American life, but presided over the instant that television achieved its thunderbolt potential to be the most powerful communication tool in history.
That defining moment unfolded Nov. 22, 1963, after Cronkite was drawn to the urgent, five-bell summons of the United Press International ticker in the CBS newsroom. Three shots had been fired at the motorcade of President John F. Kennedy.
It would take 20 minutes for a camera to be sufficiently warmed up to broadcast his image, so Cronkite interrupted "As the World Turns" and reported the news over a screen slide that said "Bulletin."
An hour later, on the air in his [short] sleeves, Cronkite was handed a sheet of paper. He paused, swallowed, removed his glasses and looked into the camera.
Viewers could already surmise what was coming next, and it came in a grim, quavering voice:
"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time."
For the next four days, he led a mourning nation through wrenching grief. For anyone alive in that time, the TV images of the Kennedy funeral procession, the salute of little John-John to his dead father and the jailhouse execution of Lee Harvey Oswald are indelibly stored in memory.
Television's speed, reach and impact had come of age, and Cronkite's Midwestern timbre provided the soundtrack.
In 1950, he joined CBS and held a variety of assignments, including hosting "You Are There," which re-enacted historical moments with actors, and "The Twentieth Century," a documentary series.
In the 1980s, CBS had a rule that everyone retired by 65. This allowed management to uproot the aging Cronkite in place of the up-and-coming Dan Rather, who was expected to woo a younger audience.
After his retirement, Cronkite was a pointed critic of television news, particularly a trend toward superficiality on local broadcasts.
"It seems to me as I travel about the country, that all it takes today to be an anchorperson is to be under 25, fair of face and figure, dulcet of tone, and well coiffed. And that is just for the men," he cracked in 1981.
He also had complaints about network news being only 30 minutes long. "We must compress to near the point of unintelligibility," he said.
Cronkite closed each newscast with "And that's the way it is," followed by the date.
Though it became his signature, it never was meant as a standard sign-off. When Cronkite took over the newscast in 1962, he wanted to find an irony-of-fate story to finish the broadcast each night, and that line was written to follow it.
Though he started his career in an era of typewriters and radios, Cronkite advocated technological advancement, particularly in news dissemination. In his autobiography, he forecast a future of revolutionary possibilities driven by a digital age.
"I expect to watch all of this from a perch yet to be determined," he added. "I just hope that wherever that is, folks will still stop me, as they do today, and ask: 'Didn't you used to be Walter Cronkite?'" -Sun News for the whole story.
He took us around the planet and he showed us to the moon.
As anchorman of the "CBS Evening News," Walter Cronkite - who died Friday at age 92 after a period of failing health - not only narrated a tumultuous era in American life, but presided over the instant that television achieved its thunderbolt potential to be the most powerful communication tool in history.
That defining moment unfolded Nov. 22, 1963, after Cronkite was drawn to the urgent, five-bell summons of the United Press International ticker in the CBS newsroom. Three shots had been fired at the motorcade of President John F. Kennedy.
It would take 20 minutes for a camera to be sufficiently warmed up to broadcast his image, so Cronkite interrupted "As the World Turns" and reported the news over a screen slide that said "Bulletin."
An hour later, on the air in his [short] sleeves, Cronkite was handed a sheet of paper. He paused, swallowed, removed his glasses and looked into the camera.
Viewers could already surmise what was coming next, and it came in a grim, quavering voice:
"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time."
For the next four days, he led a mourning nation through wrenching grief. For anyone alive in that time, the TV images of the Kennedy funeral procession, the salute of little John-John to his dead father and the jailhouse execution of Lee Harvey Oswald are indelibly stored in memory.
Television's speed, reach and impact had come of age, and Cronkite's Midwestern timbre provided the soundtrack.
In 1950, he joined CBS and held a variety of assignments, including hosting "You Are There," which re-enacted historical moments with actors, and "The Twentieth Century," a documentary series.
In the 1980s, CBS had a rule that everyone retired by 65. This allowed management to uproot the aging Cronkite in place of the up-and-coming Dan Rather, who was expected to woo a younger audience.
After his retirement, Cronkite was a pointed critic of television news, particularly a trend toward superficiality on local broadcasts.
"It seems to me as I travel about the country, that all it takes today to be an anchorperson is to be under 25, fair of face and figure, dulcet of tone, and well coiffed. And that is just for the men," he cracked in 1981.
He also had complaints about network news being only 30 minutes long. "We must compress to near the point of unintelligibility," he said.
Cronkite closed each newscast with "And that's the way it is," followed by the date.
Though it became his signature, it never was meant as a standard sign-off. When Cronkite took over the newscast in 1962, he wanted to find an irony-of-fate story to finish the broadcast each night, and that line was written to follow it.
Though he started his career in an era of typewriters and radios, Cronkite advocated technological advancement, particularly in news dissemination. In his autobiography, he forecast a future of revolutionary possibilities driven by a digital age.
"I expect to watch all of this from a perch yet to be determined," he added. "I just hope that wherever that is, folks will still stop me, as they do today, and ask: 'Didn't you used to be Walter Cronkite?'" -Sun News for the whole story.
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