America's Most Trusted Man told the news of my life -- JFK's assassination, Martin Luther King Junior's assassination, Bobby's murder, the space program, the Vietnam War. All the major stories of my youth were covered by Walter Cronkite who was a find journalist/anchor. Nothing ever happened until Walter Cronkite told us about it.
We didn't always have a TV, but, even when we didn't have a TV, I remember the entire neighborhood gathered around someone's black and white television absorbing the information that Walter Cronkite had to impart.
When I decided to go to journalism school, Walter Cronkite was my model. Not that I planned on a broadcast career, but he was, first and foremost, a journalist.
He informed a country of crucial information. He calmed a country torn to shreds by three successive assassinations in the mid to late 1960s -- two Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. He soothed our fears through race riots and wars and threats of wars. He chronicled the space program.
R.I.P Walter Cronkite!
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