Family and friends remember Cronkite
Walter Cronkite was remembered as a great journalist, sailor, friend and father during services that, despite the grandeur of the setting, felt remarkably comfortable – like the man.
Cronkite, who dies last Friday at 92, came to be called “the most trusted man in America” and was widely considered the premier TV journalist of his time.
He anchored The CBS Evening News from 1962 until 1981 – a period that included the Vietnam War, the space race, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy as well as Martin Luther King and Watergate.
“I was often asked, ’What he’s really like?’ And I would always answer, ’He’s just the way you hope he is’,” said Mike Ashford, a sailing comrade of more than 30 years and one of the speakers at Cronkite’s funeral in New York.
In an emotional address, long-time CBS newsman and 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney recalled meeting Cronkite when they both were in England covering the Second World War.
“You get to know someone pretty well in a war,” said Rooney, describing Cronkite as “such a good friend”.
“I just feel so terrible about Walter’s death that I can hardly say anything,” he admitted, then excused himself and left the pulpit.
The services were witnessed by a near capacity crowd at the elegant, enormous St Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in midtown Manhattan, where the Cronkite family has worshipped for years.
Broadcast journalists – co-workers, rivals and successors alike – were on hand, but there was also room for members of the public to pay their respects.
Sanford Socolow shared anecdotes from his many years working with Cronkite as a producer.
“Once,” Socolow recalled, “he had this bizarre idea that he would ad-lib the newscast without a script.”
As Cronkite’s cue for the control room to roll each film clip, he would gently brush his nose with his hand.
“It was utter chaos,” said Socolow. “It lasted for two days.”
But repeatedly during the ceremony, Cronkite’s passion for sailing his beloved boat, the Wyntje, was celebrated.
A separate memorial will be held in the next few weeks at New York’s Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts.
Cronkite is to be cremated and his remains buried next to his wife, Betsy, in the family plot at a cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.
