Uncle Walter Is Gone....

He was known as "The Most Trusted Man In America."

During our time together in Sing-Out in the 1960s, it was often Walter Cronkite who brought us the news about what was happening in our nation and our world.

Even many years later, he is still the calm, knowledgeable voice amid uncertain times. Nowhere was that more true than in his coverage of our space program and especially the Moon landing of Apollo XI on July 20, 1969. How ironic that Walter Cronkite would pass away at the age of 92, just as the nation reflects back on that unqiue moment in human history some 40 years ago...

But it wasn't just the moon landing for which we will always remember Walter Cronkite. He was there when the great tragedy of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King occured not far from Nashville in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968...

For those of us who grew up in the 1960s, the King murder was not the first time Walter Cronkite had brought us tragic news. There was that Friday afternoon on the 22nd of November, 1963 when the assassination of President John F. Kennedy almost caused Cronkite himself to lose it on the air.Here's the some the live,uncut TV coverage of the moments when the story was just breaking...

During his time as the anchor of "The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite" (1962-1981), he was so influential that when he returned from a reporting trip to South Vietnam just after the Tet Offensive and concluded in a rare on-air editorial that the U.S. could not win the war there, President Johnson said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Walter Cronkite was clearly a major influence on my decision to become a journalist, although actually I first admired his work as the host of the 20TH CENTURY, a show that looked back at the major news events of the last few decades.

Unfortunately, I never had the privilege to meet or talk with Walter Cronkite, although I got close once. In the late 1970s, while I was working at WTVF-TV, Channel 5 here in Nashville, I went on vacation to visit my in-laws in South Florida. That trip included seeing a Miami Dolphins game. My then-boss Chris Clark was also due to be in Miami then to attend the national Radio & Television News Directors convention.

Since we had an extra ticket, and the Dolphins' opponent was Minnesota (whose quarterback was Fran Tarkenton, an ole Georgia Bulldog which is Chris' school), we invited him to join us. Afterwards (still trying to butter up the boss), we went to dinner at Joe's Stone Crabs, one of the great restaurant in Miami Beach(now South Beach).

The place was jammed with people, but fortunately since my father-in-law dined there with some frequency we managed to get a table and have dinner. On our way out, who do we see cooling his heels in the lobby? Walter Cronkite!

My mother-in-law, surprised to see such a familar face, blurted out in a loud voice: "Why that's Walter Cronkite!" He smiled at us, nooded and we went on our way.

Our children, and pretty much anyone under the age of 35 or 40, can not really appreciate who and what Walter Cronkite was. The world and broadcast journalism has changed. There will never be another Walter Cronkite. And we will miss him.

And...as Mr. Cronkite would say..."That's the way it is."