P.S.-Pooh Says...

"What day is it? - 'It's today' - squeaked Piglet. 'My favourite day' - said Pooh."- A.A. Milne

18 July 2009

The Anchor of Our Lives-In Appreciation, Walter Cronkite


"Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened." Walter Cronkite

In an age before Twitter, Blogs, Blackberrys, texting, email and even cable news, there were three networks that televised the news, but there was one man behind a simple desk that "delivered" the news.

Each evening America had dinner with Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News as the man who would become the narrator of our lives reviewed the events of our communal day.

Walter Cronkite died yesterday at the age of 92. It is safe to say there will never be one of his kind again...no one will unite this country each evening, collect all of us in one place at one time to review events, inform us and discuss "the way it is". The news media is too vast and fragmented, as perhaps we are as a country.


"Walter was always more than just an anchor,... He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day; a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was family. He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down. This country has lost an icon and a dear friend, and he will be truly missed." President Obama on Walter Cronkite

Listening to all the reports on his life it is the voice that resonates. The voice that united a country through tumultuous days, the voice that quavered as he announced a young President had been assassinated, the voice that filled with the glee of a wondrous little boy as he declared that .".. Man on the Moon...oh boy", the voice that America had dinner with each evening as they waited to hear about their day. The cadence of that voice was a part of the soundtrack of our lives. He was the source, if he said so then it was so. A voice that informed without talking at his audience or down to his audience but rather with his audience, taking them through the facts. His was the voice that told us the way it was.

It was an era when one man could unite a nation, inform a nation, but not just any man. At one point his audience was so large, and his presence in American life so entrenched, that he was declared the Most Trusted Man in America. Please Visit Applause!