I was four years old and wide-eyed, perhaps especially if snow was falling. Almost nothing was better than snow in my early years, and I whined until I was permitted to go outside and roll in it. I made no calculation about whether it was deep enough to roll in without getting muddy. Besides, what difference did a little mud make? Even a small accumulation of snow was a powerful, powerful magnet.
The magnet and all that whining finally drew me outside. I was doing what I did when my mother appeared on the front porch to call me back inside. She was crying. Even at four I knew something was wrong. Moms don’t cry unless there is a good reason.
The date was Nov. 22, 1963. It was the day I came to know that Walter Cronkite was a very important man and that there were other important men on two other channels.
President Kennedy had just been assassinated in Dallas, which I assumed was a faraway place. It was the first time I’d ever heard the word assassinated. At four, I knew that Kennedy was the president; I didn’t know what it meant for certain, but I knew that he was sort of like the maximum boss and always was to be treated with the utmost respect. My Grandma was there. She was crying, too.
We watched TV pretty much for a week straight. I remember John-John, a boy even younger than I. And I remember the horses at the funeral. I was scared they might take off and ruin things. Horses do that sometimes, but they did not on this occasion.
Walter Cronkite later took me to the moon; the 40th anniversary of man as an extraterrestrial is Monday. Walter couldn’t believe it in 1969. Neither could I. I’m 50 now, and I’m still blown away by it. I never look at the moon without thinking people actually have been up there. Those same people are part of a species that ferried itself on foot, boat or horseback only decades earlier and made it possible for me to publish a Blog accessible virtually worldwide only decades later.
Cronkite and President Kennedy. Cronkite and the moon.
Next came Cronkite and Watergate — at least in terms of what is seared in my mind. Truth is, though, Walter is tied to history in so many ways that a person of a certain age group can pick and choose from many, many moments. Walter and Martin Luther King, for example. Walter and Vietnam. Walter and World War II. Walter and the Russians.
Walter and Ted Baxter.
Walter, associated with serious events, had a sense of humor.
The President of the United States dropped everything he was doing last night and issued a special statement on the life and the passing of Walter Cronkite.
An American treasure: Walter Cronkite. Nov. 4, 1916-July 17, 2009.