Cronkite (107 page)
Authors: Douglas Brinkley
Tags: #General, #United States, #Biography & Autobiography, #Biography, #Television Journalists - United States, #Television Journalists, #Editors; Journalists; Publishers, #Cronkite; Walter, #Editors; Journalists; Publishers.; Bisacsh
645 “Dan didn’t have many friends”:
Author interview with Jeff Fager, January 9, 2012.
646 “was overjoyed”:
Author interview with Roger Mudd, November 14, 2011.
646 “I’ve got a new girlfriend”:
Author interview with Jimmy Buffett, September 18, 2011.
646 Just months after Betsy died, Cronkite began dating Joanna Simon:
Kate Nocera and Erin Durkin, “Girlfriend Recalls the Way Walter Cronkite Was: As a Journalist Impartial, As a Human Passionate,”
New York Daily News
, July 20 2009.
646 “casserole ladies”:
Author interview with Marlene Adler, December 9, 2011.
647 “gal pal”:
Author interview with Joanna Simon, January 13, 2012.
647 “Walter didn’t wait very long to strike”:
Nocera and Durkin, “Girlfriend Recalls the Way Cronkite Was.”
647 he proposed to her:
Carol Ross Joynt,
Innocent Spouse: A Memoir
(New York: Crown, 2011), p. 258.
647 “It was like I was reunited with my grandfather”:
Beverly Keel to Douglas Brinkley, May 19, 2011.
648 “As long as I’m your King of Hearts”:
Author interview with Joanna Simon, January 13, 2012.
648 “beyond anything I could have ever believed”:
“NASA Honors Veteran Journalist Walter Cronkite,” NASA.gov, February 28, 2006, http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/features/cronkite_ambassador_of_exploration.html.
648 he donated it to the University of Texas’s Dolph Briscoe Center:
“The Briscoe Center for American History: The Walter Cronkite Papers,” www.cah.utexas.edu/collections/news_media_cronkite.php (accessed July 30, 2011).
648 Cronkite helping the Walter Cronkite School:
“Cronkite Takes First Dig at School’s New Digs,”
ASU News Now
, February 21, 2007.
649 “Every day, Mike, is a blessing”:
Author interview with Joanna Simon, January 14, 2012.
649 “Walter and I had a great romance”:
Author interview with Joanna Simon, January 15, 2012.
650 “Mar-a-juana”:
Author interview with Peter Simon, January 15, 2012.
650 “the war on drugs is a failure”:
Walter Cronkite, “Telling the Truth About the War on Drugs,” reprinted by
Huffington Post
, March 1, 2006.
651 “Now Walter Cronkite, the most trusted news broadcaster in American history”:
Phillip Smith, “Cronkite vs. O’Reilly: May the Most Trusted Man Win,” AlterNet, March 3, 2006, http://www.alternet.org/drugs/33009/.
651 He would do the same at Gordon Manning’s funeral:
“Gordon Manning, 89, a TV News Executive,”
New York Times
, September 9, 2006.
652 “It left us numb”:
Author interview with Jimmy Buffett, July 18, 2011.
652 Cronkite had a flurry of health scares:
Author interview with Kathy Cronkite, June 3, 2011.
652 “Sometimes, he would look out the window at the East River”:
Author interview with Chip Cronkite, February 20, 2012.
653 “He didn’t recognize me from Adam”:
Author interview with Bernard Kalb, February 26, 2011.
653 By late 2007, ninety-one-year-old Cronkite started contributing weekly editorials:
Brian Stelter, “Cronkite Joins Retirement TV,”
New York Times
, November 15, 2007.
653 “It turned into a ghastly moment”:
Author interview with Caroline Graham, March 29, 2011.
653 “Let’s get this thing going”:
Steve Samaras, “Sailing Hall of Fame Will Boost City,”
The Capital
, March 9, 2008.
653 “Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like Walter Cronkite”:
Polly Paddock, “Cronkite Reassures as Always—Former CBS Anchor Guides Charlotte Audience Through Century in Review,”
Charlotte Observer
, October 22, 1999.
653 Cronkite and Simon went out for dinner with Nick and Nina Clooney:
“We Hear,”
New York Post
, March 13, 2003.
654 “They didn’t applaud”:
Matea Gold, “Obama Extols Cronkite at Memorial,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 9, 2009.
654 “It was hysterical”:
Author interview with Joanna Simon, January 14, 2012.
654 “It’s Uncle no more, he’s Grandpa Walter now”:
Tom Shales, “Dear, Trusted Uncle Walter and the ‘Legacy’ of World War II,”
Washington Post
, April 29, 2009.
654 “I wanted to spit on them”:
Walter Cronkite, “Legacy of War,” PBS (transcript), April 29, 2009.
655 “my God, my God, my God. It’s too damn much”:
Ibid.
Epilogue
: Electronic Uncle Sam
656 “Everybody who loved Dad just surrounded him”:
Author interview with Kathy Cronkite, June 3, 2011.
656 “He’d smile . . . at peace with the world”:
Author interview with Jimmy Buffett, September 18, 2011.
657 “Walter Cronkite just died too”:
Author interview with Deborah Rush, February 21, 2012.
657 “Cronkite was—and this is what psychologists say is the greatest tribute to a parent—
there
”:
David Shribman, “Can Viewers Kick Cronkite Habit?”
Washington Star
, March 2, 1981.
657 He was, as the
Los Angeles Times
and, later, the
Huffington Post
said,
paterfamilias
:
Reed Johnson, “Tethered in Technoculture,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 18, 2005; Peggy Drexler, “Gasp! Katie Plays Rough,”
Huffington Post
, September 11, 2007.
658 “The one guy in TV history nobody ever got sick of”:
Author interview with Ted Turner, April 20, 2011.
658 “We have a self-confidence we didn’t have in the beginning”:
Ferretti, “What Do They Do?”
659 “a kind of innate, Calvinist honesty that can’t be manufactured”:
Al Reinert, “The Secret World of Walter Cronkite,”
Texas Monthly
, January 1976.
659 “our electronic Uncle Sam”:
Kurt Vonnegut, “A Reluctant Big Shot,”
The Nation
, March 7, 1981.
659 Cremation and a low-key ceremony, before burial next to Betsy:
“Cronkite to Be Buried Beside Wife in Missouri,” AP, reprinted in
Denver Post
, July 19, 2009.
659 Any donations were directed to the Walter and Betsy Cronkite Foundation:
Chad Butler, “Now Late Walter Cronkite to Be Buried Here in Missouri,”
St. Louis Examiner
, July 18, 2009.
659 “I hate the world without Walter Cronkite”:
Michael Essany, “George Clooney Weighs In on the Loss of Walter Cronkite,”
Entertainer Examiner
, July 18, 2009.
659 dubbed him “truly the father of television news”:
Valerie J. Nelson, “Walter Cronkite, Longtime CBS Anchorman, Dies at 92,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 18, 2009.
660 his extraordinary sense of “purpose and compassion”:
Brian Stelter, “Television Icons Reflect on Cronkite’s Career,”
New York Times,
July 17, 2009, http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/television-icons-reflect-on-cronkites-career/.
660 Couric had used Cronkite’s voice to introduce her
CBS Evening News
:
Ed Pilkington, “Cronkite to Couric; CBS Weighs Anchor,”
Guardian
, September 6, 2006.
660 “Thanks for watching”:
Howard Rosenberg, “Katie Couric, News Anchors, and the Cult of Personality,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 14, 2008.
660 Barbara Walters used Sirius XM Radio to air a marathon:
Cherie Saunders, “CBS RLTV and Sirius XM Announce Walter Cronkite Special,”
Washington Examiner
, July 19, 2009.
660 “Walter had that ability”:
“Dan Rather Reflects on Walter Cronkite,” MSNBC.com, Saturday, July 18, 2009.
660 “There was nobody better than him”:
Author interview with Dan Rather, May 28, 2011.
660 “I feel like I’m almost sitting in for Wally Schirra this morning”:
Face the Nation
transcript, Sunday, July 19, 2009, CBS News Archive, New York.
661 “Because everybody knew that Walter didn’t get his suntan in the studio lights”:
Face the Nation
transcript, Sunday, July 19, 2009, CBS News Archive, New York.
661 “ ‘Boy oh boy—when and where do you want me?’ ”:
Tom Brokaw, “The Most Trusted Man in America,”
Time
, August 3, 2009, p. 20.
661 “I feel so terrible about Walter’s death”:
Matea Gold, “Cronkite Eulogized as Newsman, Friend, Father,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 24, 2009.
662 “He was the original social media guy”:
Author interview with Mickey Hart, February 17, 2011.
662 “a seagull—graceful in flight, rapacious in appetite”:
“Proust Questionnaire.”
662 “He had an antenna sensitive to friends’ pain”:
Author interview with Mike Ashford, May 7, 2011.
662 A favorite of Cronkite’s was “Sea Fever”:
Author interview with Bill Harbach, January 24, 2012.
663 Everyone in America, Mason soon learned, wanted to be part:
Author interview with Linda Mason, April 30, 2011.
663 “Helping establish some TV news standards”:
“Proust Questionnaire.”
663 “but I got there in time”:
Christiane Amanpour to Douglas Brinkley, January 23, 2012.
664 “What would Walter do?”:
Christiane Amanpour, “Diary,” September 18, 2009, Private Archive, New York, NY.
664 Obama had “grown up watching Cronkite”:
President Barack Obama, comment to Douglas Brinkley, July 11, 2011.
664 “Everybody in the building was glued to the ceremony”:
Author interview with Armen Keteyian, July 3, 2011.
664 “Journalism is more than just a profession”:
“President Obama,” September 9, 2009, Lincoln Center Memorial (transcript), CBS News Archive, New York.
664 that viewed news as “just another profit center”:
Jim Wallace, “Cronkite Says TV News Fails to Tell Whole Story,”
Charleston Daily Mail
, December 12, 2000.
665 “Storytelling was Walter’s passion”:
Buzz Aldrin, “Cronkite Remembered,” transcript, September 18, 2009.
665 “There are better writers than me, better reporters”:
Roger Vaughan, “Cruising with Cronkite,”
Motor Boating & Sailing
, November 1976.
666 “Nobody’s asked me, which is strange, but I think the networks ought to be doing headlines”:
Howard Kurtz, “Walter Cronkite Was the Last of the Towering Anchormen,”
Washington Post
, July 18, 2009.
666 Cronkite’s desk may have been turned to pulp wood:
Author interview with David Rhodes, January 7, 2012.
667 “For a news analyst and reporter of the happenings of the day to be successful”:
“Neil Armstrong Statement on the Death of Walter Cronkite,”
NASA Newsroom Press Release
, July 17, 2009.
667 “He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down”:
Todd Leopold, “Former CBS Anchor ‘Uncle Walter’ Cronkite Dead at 92,”
CNN.com
, August 29, 2009, http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-17/us/walter.cronkite.dead_1_walter-cronkite-huffington-post-egyptian-leader?_s=PM:US.
George Abbey, Houston, Texas • Marlene Adler, New York • Roger Ailes, New York • Buzz Aldrin, Washington D.C. • Neil Armstrong, Houston, Texas • Mike Ashford, Annapolis, Maryland • Bob Asman, Washington, D.C. • James A. Baker III, Houston, Texas • Joel Banow, Naples, Florida • Ben Barnes, Austin, Texas • Fred Barnes, Washington, D.C. • Kay Barnes, Kansas City, Missouri • Warren Beatty, Beverly Hills, California • Russ Bensley, Homewood, Illinois • Carl Bernstein, Washington, D.C. • Porter Bibb, New York • Izzy Bleckman, Vero Beach, Florida • Merv Block, New York • Julian Bond, Charlottesville, Virginia • Ron Bonn, San Diego, California • Ben Bradlee, Washington, D.C. • Ed Bradley, Woody Creek, Colorado • Rita Braver, Washington, D.C. • Tom Brokaw, New York • Aaron Brown, Scottsdale, Arizona • Skip Brown, San Francisco, California • Patrick Buchanan, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware • Jimmy Buffett, Key West, Florida • Joseph Califano, New York • Don Carleton, Austin, Texas • Liz Carpenter, Austin, Texas • Nick Clooney, Augusta, Kentucky • Connie Chung, Glacier National Park, Montana • Charles Colson, Naples, Florida • Katie Couric, New York • Chip Cronkite, New York • Kathy Cronkite, Austin, Texas • Nancy Cronkite, New York • David Dary, Norman, Oklahoma • Tom Davis, New York • Morton Dean, Truro, Massachusetts • Sam Donaldson, Washington, D.C. • Daniel Ellsberg, Alameda County, California • Stephen Erlich, Los Angeles, California • Jeffrey Fager, New York • Bill Felling, New York • Michael Finley, Ashland, Oregon • Gerald Ford, Rancho Mirage, California • Ed Forgotson, New York • Ed Fouhy, Chatham, Massachusetts • Michael Freedman, Washington, D.C. • David Friend, New York • Ruth Friendly, New York • Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, Lake Charles, Louisiana • John Glenn, Columbus, Ohio • Andrew Goldberg, New York • Stanhope Gould, New York • Caroline Graham, Los Angeles, California • Jeff Gralnick, Weston, Connecticut •Phil Gries, Albertson, New York • Bill Harbach, Fairfield, Connecticut • Bob Hardesty, Austin, Texas • Mickey Hart, San Francisco, California • Dennis Hayes, Seattle, Washington • Don Hewitt, New York • A. R. Hogan, Bethesda, Maryland • Brit Hume, Washington, D.C. • Tom Johnson, Atlanta, Georgia • Phil Jones, Naples, Florida • Gordon S. Joseloff , Westport, Connecticut • Carol Joynt, Washington, D.C. • Bernard Kalb, Washington, D.C. • Marvin Kalb, Washington, D.C. • Rick Kaplan, New York • Jay Kaufman, Atlanta, Georgia • Ethel Kennedy, West Palm Beach, Florida • David Kennerly, Los Angeles, California • Henry Kissinger, New York • Joe Klein, Washington, D.C. • Mathilde Krim, New York • Ron Kucera, Columbia, Missouri • Brian Lamb, Washington, D.C. • John Lane, Rye, New York • Lewis H. Lapham, New York • John Laurence, Haslemere, United Kingdom • John Lehman, New York • Jim Lehrer, Austin, Texas • Richard Leibner, New York • Norman Mailer, Austin, Texas • Frank Mankiewicz, Washington, D.C. • Wynton Marsalis, New York • Linda Mason, New York • Chris Matthews, Washington, D.C. • Jim McGillian, Carmel, California • George McGovern, St. Augustine, Florida • Megan McKinney, Chicago, Illinois • Don Michel, Dallas, Texas • Harry Middleton, Austin, Texas • Bill Minor, Phoenix, Arizona • Andrea Mitchell, Washington, D.C. • Les Moonves, New York • Patt Morrison, Los Angeles, California • Roger Mudd, McLean, Virginia • Dee Dee Myers, Washington, D.C. • Al Neuharth, Cocoa Beach, Florida • Tom Noel, Dallas, Texas • Barack Obama, Washington, D.C. • Bill O’Reilly, New York • Al Ortiz, New York • Charles Osgood, New York • Scott Pelley, New York • Robert Pierpoint, Santa Barbara, California • Bill Plante, Washington, D.C. • Sandor M. Polster, Durham, Maine • Hugh Raisky, Newport, Rhode Island • Dan Rather, New York and Austin, Texas • Missie Rennie, Vero Beach, Florida • David Rhodes, New York • Lynda Johnson Robb, Austin, Texas • Andy Rooney, New York • William Ruckelshaus, Seattle, Washington • Deborah Rush, New York • Morley Safer, New York • Bob Schieffer, Washington, D.C. • David Schneider, New York • Jack Schneider, Westport, Connecticut • Mark Segal, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Doug Shadel, Seattle, Washington • Bernard Shaw, Takoma Park, Maryland • Don Shelby, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Fay Shoss, Houston, Texas • Joanna Simon, New York • Peter Simon, Edgartown, Massachusetts • William Small, New York • Richard Snow, New York • Sandy Socolow, Austin, Texas, and New York • Ted Sorensen, New York • Lesley Stahl, New York • Oliver Stone, Los Angeles, California • Mary Lou Teel, New York • Doug Terry, Washington, D.C. • Lee Thornton, Bethesda, Maryland • Ted Turner, Atlanta, Georgia • Ed Vebell, Westport, Connecticut • William J. vanden Heuvel, New York • Bob Vitarelli, Chevy Chase, Maryland • Diana Walker, Washington, D.C. • Chris Wallace, Washington, D.C. • Barbara Walters, New York • Jann Wenner, Sun Valley, Idaho • Shirley Wershba, Floral Park, New York • Lally Weymouth, East Hampton, New York • Bill Whitehurst, Austin, Texas • Elie Wiesel, New York • Jon Wilkman, Los Angeles, California • Brian Williams, New Canaan, Connecticut • Lew Wood, Los Angeles, California • Bob Woodward, Washington, D.C. • Arnold Zenker, Weston, Massachusetts
