Walter Cronkite

Journalist since 1937; with CBS television since 1950.

Was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. This is the highest honor a U.S. civilian can receive. Was the lead anchor on the CBS Evening News from 16 April 1962 until 6 March 1981.

Reported on the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals in 1945.

Is the 1966 recipient of the prestigious Connor Award given by the brothers of the Phi Alpha Tau fraternity based out of Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also an honorary brother of the fraternity.

Satirized by Ray Goulding as "Walter Chronic" in Cold Turkey .

December 2003 - Underwent surgery to repair a previously injured achilles tendon.

Makes a unique claim about his television career. When he attended 1933 Worlds Fair, he was present at an exhibit displaying an early example of television. At the exhibit, the attendees were allowed to sit in front of the camera and watch themselves on the screen. When Cronkite sat in front of the camera he did an improptu impression of a man he had seen playing two flutes at once. Therefore, he jokingly claims that he was definitely on television decades before his contemporaries.

Attended both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1928. The former was on a boy scout field trip and the latter was during a visit to his grandparents in Kansas City.

CBS asked Cronkite to come up with a signature closing line for the evening news. When he came up with "And thats the way it is", CBS was concerned that it would suggest a certain infallability. But Cronkite explained that it would fit any type of story whether it was funny or sad or ironic.

His first job as a journalist was as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Times.

His stage name during his days in radio was Walter Wilcox.

The very day he was born, his father immediately left the hospital and went out and voted for President Woodrow Wilson.

His mother Helen died in 1993 at the age of 101.

Father-in-law of Deborah Rush.

In 1964 he was fired from his anchorman duties at the Democratic National Convention. CBS had gotten a new president who had never worked on a presidential campaign and had definate ideas about how CBS would be covering it. It turned out to be a mess and as a result Cronkite got some of the blame so the network executives removed him from the coverage but kept him as the anchorman of the evening news. Jokingly Cronkite became buddies with the president of NBC and the people at CBS were horrified that he was being offered a job in the rival network. So when the Republican Convention rolled around Cronkite got to cover it without using the new presidents tactics.

At the birth of television, he and his team at CBS practically invented the institution of the evening news program. In 1951, one of the stage managers at CBS told him to sit at the desk and do the news. Cronkite asked what he meant and the managers simply said "I dont know just do it". His idea was to first just talk to the camera like another person and organize the news stories in the same vein as the newspaper beginning with the top story and working his way down to human interest stories.

Betsy Cronkite, his wife, was working as a newspaper journalist when they met.

He is an only child.

He met his wife Betsy when he was working at a radio station in Kansas City. The two were paired up to do a cosmetics commercial and married a year later.

He was of English, Scottish, German, and Dutch descent.

Father of Kathy Cronkite and Chip Cronkite.

In 1997, released his autobiography, "A Reporters Life", which coincided with a two-hour TV special, "Cronkite Remembers" , in which he reminisced about his years as a reporter. A week later, an eight-hour version aired on The Discovery Channel.

On March 15, 2005 he lost his wife of 64 years, Betsy, three weeks before their 65th anniversary.

Is a licensed amateur (ham) radio operator with the call sign KB2GSD.

He is outspoken in his distaste for Oliver Stone s film JFK . Calling the film "Oliver Stone junk" and "A dangerous work of fiction that seriously mid-leads a whole generation of Americans who were not alive at that time".

Father was Walter Cronkite Sr., a dentist. Mother was Helen Cronkite who died in 1993 at the age of 101.

While attending The University of Texas, one of his pastimes was acting in student plays. In one of them, he co-starred with Eli Wallach. He dropped out of UT to become a journalist.

On the day of the Kennedy assassination, he said the he had just come back from lunch and was standing at the teletype machine when rang a rare five bells - a bulletin. He shouted "Lets get on the air!" but getting on the air wasnt possible because the cameras had to be placed and then warmed up (after this, the networks always had a camera ready in the newsroom). He went to an audio booth just off the newsroom floor and, interrupting "As the World Turns" , made an audio announcement over a CBS logo. It took another 20 minutes to get on camera.

Has a Muppet on "Sesame Street" named after him, the grouch journalist "Walter Cranky".

In 1969 when Apollo XI was going to the Moon, Cronkite was on the air 27 of the 30 hours that it took for the flight, which many in the profession called "Walter to Walter" coverage. At the moment that Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder of the Lunar Module onto the Moon surface, Cronkite was speechless for the first time in his career. All he could say was "Wow!" and "Oh Boy!". Famous words that will live in history.

Attended Lanier Junior High School in Houston, Texas. Another famous ex-student was Linda Ellerbee.

Attended San Jacinto High School in Houston, Texas with Marvin Zindler.

Provided the voice over introduction "This is the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric".

Moved to Houston, Texas when he was 10-years-old. Worked at the Houston Post as a copy boy, cub reporter and had a paper route.

Some time before his death Cronkites family reveled that he was suffering from cerebrovascular disease.

His ancestors had settled in New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony that became New York.

When he was 16 he went to Chicagos 1933 Worlds Fair. He volunteered to help demonstrate an experimental version of television.

Longtime boyfriend of Joanna Simon until his death in August, 2009.

According to Cronkites autobiography, his mother Helen Fitzche dated Douglas MacArthur as a teenager. The future general asked her to marry him but her father would not allow it because he felt MacArthur was too old for her. Cronkite asked the General about it one night at a party and his only response was "Ah, yes. Helen Fitzche." and walked away.

Inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians in 1999.

Release of his book, "Around America: A Tour of Our Magnificent Coastline".

Release of his book, "A Reporters Life".

Release of the book, "Walter Cronkite: His Life and Times" by Doug James.

(1 April 1997) Undergoes quadruple bypass surgery in a New York hospital.

Release of his book, "Eye on the World".

Release of his audiobook, "Cronkite Remembers".

Inducted into the International Mustache Hall of Fame in 2015 (inaugural class) in the category Film & Television.

The great sadness of my life is that I never achieved the hour newscast,which would not have been twice as good as the half-hour newscast, but,many times as good.

I firmly believe in the necessity of military censorship but there is,considerable danger to the democracy when in the guise of military,censorship our government engages in political censorship.

In broadcasting, I learned the hard way how prepared you need to be to,be spontaneous.

I felt that I had been driven from the temple where for nineteen years, along with other believers, I had worshiped the great god News on a daily basis.

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.

Justice was born outside the home and a long way from it and it has never been adopted there.

I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost - and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy.

The democratic system is challenged by the failure in television because our evening news programmes have gone for an attempt to entertain as much as to inform in the desperate fight for ratings.

Journalism is what we need to make democracy work.

In journalism, we recognize a kind of hierarchy of fame among the famous. We measure it in two ways: by the length of an obituary and by how far in advance it is prepared. Presidents, former presidents, and certain heads of state are at the top of the chain.

Sometimes a famous subject may even outlive his own obituary writer.

We the people have the strength to bring our country from our weak-kneed stumbling gait in the last ranks of reason to the leadership of the great march to environmental victory.

In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.

I want to say that probably 24 hours after I told CBS that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday, I was already regretting it. And I regretted it every day since.

I hope that, somewhere, Mom and Dad are proud that little Walter is performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict, we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace.

Arianna Huffington has exercised her renowned wisdom to give journalism another boost along the ever busier Internet. Her blog site promises to be an interesting challenge for those of us lucky enough to be invited to participate with our occasional contributions.

There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free. .