I am saddened that Walter Cronkite is no longer here. I feel like he was part of my family. We watched him every night and there was just something about him. He took you with him and believe me there were places to go in the 60's and 70's... the killing of JFK and the funeral, the civil rights movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the Vietnam war, the anti war movement, and the politics. If you remember Cronkite as an unbiased, just report the "facts" journalist you do not remember Cronkite. It was Walter Cronkite who saw the futility in the Vietnam War by 1968 and said so on his news broadcast. He did not scream and call anybody an idiot, he just calmly said what he believed to be the truth and a nation listened and realized that he was right. President Johnson said at the time that if he had lost Cronkite he had lost the country. Walter was appalled during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago at the antics of Mayor Daley. He made this very clear as he anchored CBS's coverage from his booth high atop the convention floor. He loved the space program and did not hesitate to show it. He almost jumped out of his chair the night John Glenn won the senate seat in Ohio. I can see his face right now smiling. He did not take me to the moon but that's a story for Monday, the 40th anniversary of the first men on the moon.
The world seems a little less comfortable.
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