This is a heartbreaker in IYA2009.
We lost Walter Cronkite tonight… or maybe last night, depending on which time zone you live in…
The trusted voice for America in the 60s and 70s, the voice of reason who looked liked everyone’s father, and later everyone’s Grandfather…
The man who narrated a Moon Landing for a nation and a generation, telling it so it all made sense to the man in the street… when the man in the street concentrated hard on the science of how to get his car working…
As a media person myself in those days, he was one of my Heroes, and I didn’t have many. Cronkite and Murrow were about it, with Huntley and Brinkley (the brightly feathered Peacock Team) as an amusement-valued backup when the big guys wern’t available. Perhaps even then I may have needed a life, but not as much as the world needed, and still needs, Cronkite or one of his disciples, or trainees, or ANYONE who knows how to do the same job in the modern-day info-storm!
The Universe agrees! Murrow and Cronkite are amongst a very rare breed; Obviously they both understand what is going on in the world… but more important, they can communicate those concepts to the rest of us, in real time, while the recorders/cameras are rolling.
I need to rewatch the Lunar landings now, and his reaction to them. He captured our hearts, our minds, and maybe just the edge of our souls…
And He will be missed!!!