Walter Cronkite was a class act

If anyone deserves a memorial service with all the major networks carrying it live, it should be Walter Cronkite. The man was a class act. During the last presidential campaign, I longed for Walter Cronkite. Cool, calm, collected and all about telling the true story was what he was about. I never once heard him rant and rave, but I could count on him to be there with the real scoop. AND I could also count on him being reassuring and even fatherly.

As a "fatherless" child of the sixties, it was helpful to have Walter Cronkite as a guide through tremulous times on the evening news. Long before cable and it gluttony of news programs, CBS Evening News was the gold standard of the major three networks. Walter was there when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas and I was a frightened 5th grader. Walter was there when Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King also took a bullet. Walter was there bringing us nightly word of the horror that was Viet Nam. Walter was there when we heard "The Eagle has landed." He was steady and always there. It made the sixties doable for a teenager without a functioning father. (But who had a very wise mother.)

Tomorrow marks forty years since this photo was taken. (Click here for forty great 40 year old photos!) What a night! Imagine Arizona temperatures just like now but the only cooling source a swamp cooler. Swamp coolers were pretty effective until the moister air would blow in and the temps would hit 100 plus teens, then the best it could do was somewhere in the nineties. The family had gathered in the living room on Bluebell Lane and it was hot, really hot. We were determined to watch this historical event, MAN LANDING ON THE MOON. It was magical if miserable.

(By the time they walked I was in my underwear only. At 16 I felt it was the smart thing to do. I learned on conversing with my sisters this summer that I was also very offensive. Please accept my apologies!)

So, I think it only appropriate that Walter Cronkite finished a wonderful, useful, and memorable life at this commemorative time of when he lead the nation forty years ago in a "gee whiz" fashion as a nation watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon while stating, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." I am grateful for Walter Cronkite's leadership and courtly manner. I have and will continue to miss him!