Walter Cronkite
 |
 |
|
"The most trusted man in America."
That honor belongs to only one man--Walter Cronkite, former anchorman and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, and the most admired and respected news broadcaster of all time. One recent poll found that many Americans consider him their favorite newscaster even though he hasn't delivered the news since the early days of the Reagan presidency. Although he's no longer a fixture in the public view, Cronkite enjoyed a renaissance after the appearance of his popular autobiography, A Reporter's Life (Knopf, 1997), and his eight-part series, Walter Cronkite Remembers, which aired on The Discovery Channel in 1997. Both projects were rooted in his long and affectionate relationship with The University of Texas at Austin, which spans more than 65 years. When Walter Cronkite decided to write his autobiography, he turned to UT for help. Specifically, he turned to Don E. Carleton, director of UT's Center for American History, which houses the Walter Cronkite papers and other memorabilia that the veteran news reporter collected during his long and admirable career. Cronkite arrived on UT's campus in 1933, more interested in honing his reporting skills than in attending classes. He quickly found part-time work as the afternoon sports reporter at radio station KNOW. The only problem was that the station had no sports wire, so he would surreptitiously memorize the day's baseball scores as they came off the wire in a nearby smoke shop, then dash back to the station to deliver them on the air. But when the baseball season ended, he failed an audition for a permanent job at the station. Station manager Hartfield Weeden "was kind enough about it," Cronkite recalled in his autobiography. "He just said that I'd never make a radio announcer." KNOW's rejection sent Cronkite looking for work at the State Capitol, where he spent hours, including many when he should have been in class, observing legislators, lobbyists, and reporters at work. He was hired by Vann Kennedy and Paul Bolton, who published a monthly political newsletter and operated the local Hearst International News Service Bureau. The job "may have been one of the best breaks of my life," Cronkite wrote. "But it was also the beginning of the end of my college education." Over the next two years, the ambitious young reporter learned his way around politics and slowly slipped out of school. When he was offered a full-time job at the former daily Houston Press, he left UT with little fanfare. "Oddly, no one, including my parents, made much of a protest," he recalled in his book. "It may have been that, in the throes of the Great Depression, nearly everyone valued a job in hand more highly than an education in the bush." 
Cronkite never again found himself unemployed. For several years he bounced back and forth between radio and newspaper work. He signed on as a war correspondent with United Press International during World War II and stayed with the wire service until CBS News lured him into television in 1950. There, he helped launch the television juggernaut and became one of the medium's first and most enduring superstars. Although he didn't graduate from UT, Cronkite has never forgotten his alma mater. He has served as an adjunct faculty member in the College of Communication and taught a three-day honors seminar in 1988. Friends and supporters have endowed the Walter Cronkite Regents Chair in Communication, which, at his request, is reserved for the dean of the College of Communication. He recently lent his voice to the UT Virtual Campus, a multimedia tour of the campus available over the Internet. And he has dubbed the voiceover for a series of television spots designed for UT sporting events. Now in his eighties, Cronkite seems happy to be one of the busiest men in America. He maintains a steady schedule of speaking engagements and television appearances and spends what spare time he has sailing or relaxing with his wife, Betsy, at their home in New York. It's just the sort of life Americans would choose for the man they trust the most. By Laura Tuma,
|
||
 |
 |