Yesterday longtime C.B.S. newsman and nightly news anchor Walter Cronkite died at age 92.  I would like to extend my condolences to his family and his friends.

Cronkite was known as “the most trusted man in America” for good reason.  He brought the news into the homes of several generations every day in a way that few now can.  He was an old fashioned reporter presenting the facts and never attempted to make himself part of the story.

In America today we tend to overpraise recently deceased people of note, throwing words like icon, hero and legend out as praise for every singer and actor we happen to like.  Cronkite was all of these things and more.  From bombers in the skies over Nazi Germany to the D-Day beaches, from the jungles of VietNam to the moon landings and beyond Cronkite became a legend in his own time and will remain an American icon for many, many years to come.

I doubt there is an American alive today over the age of 30 who does not have childhood memories of an event that includes Uncle Walter.  For me it was the moon landings.  I was just two and a half when they took place,  so they are just about my earliest memory and after mom woke me up to witness them it was Uncle Walter that told the story of the brave Americans risking their lives to be the first to step foot on another world.  He had the ability to make you feel like you were there sharing in the joy, sadness and risk of the journey.  Just after Armstrong’s fist step on the moon the camera cut to Uncle Walter and the sheer look of wonder on his face must have rivaled that on my own young face at the time.  That event changed the way I looked at not only our world but at the entire universe.  It made it seem to me like anything was possible and I feel that the experience was made that way in no small part by Uncle Walter.

Cronkite was so well loved and respected by the American people that when he reported from the jungles of VietNam shortly after the failed Tet offensive and in a rare moment for him gave his personal opinion that we could not win that war, President Johnson’s comment was “thats it then, if  I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America”.

Reporters today can only hope to live up to his reputation and his level of trust with the public.  Even with the influence he had he never, unlike reporters today, attempted to impose his own views into the story.  He never attempted to tell us what we should do or think.  He reported the facts and when at the end of the night he said “and that’s the way it is” you could take it to the bank that it was so.

We will all miss you Uncle Walter.