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News Legend Walter Cronkite Dead At 92

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goinsfl:
July 17, 2009

Walter Cronkite, the premier TV anchorman of the networks' golden age who reported a tumultuous time with reassuring authority and came to be called "the most trusted man in America," died Friday. He was 92.

Cronkite's longtime chief of staff, Marlene Adler, said Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. at his Manhattan home surrounded by family. She said the cause of death was cerebral vascular disease.

Adler said, "I have to go now" before breaking down into what sounded like a sob. She said she had no further comment.

Cronkite was the face of the "CBS Evening News" from 1962 to 1981, when stories ranged from the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to racial and anti-war riots, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis.

It was Cronkite who read the bulletins coming from Dallas when Kennedy was shot Nov. 22, 1963, interrupting a live CBS-TV broadcast of the soap opera "As the World Turns."

Cronkite was the broadcaster to whom the title "anchorman" was first applied, and he came so identified in that role that eventually his own name became the term for the job in other languages. (Swedish anchors are known as Kronkiters; In Holland, they are Cronkiters.)

"He was a great broadcaster and a gentleman whose experience, honesty, professionalism and style defined the role of anchor and commentator," CBS Corp. chief executive Leslie Moonves said in a statement.

"It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite," CBS News president Sean McManus said in a statement. "More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments."

CBS has scheduled a prime-time special, "That's the Way it Was: Remembering Walter Cronkite," for 7 p.m. Sunday.

The longtime newsman was born Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. in St. Joseph, Mo., on Nov. 4, 1916, to Walter Leland Cronkite and Helena Fritsch. In 1933, he attended the University of Texas at Austin while working with Houston Press and Scripps-Howard News service. In 1935, he dropped out to pursue journalism full time.

He started his career as a battlefield correspondent for United Press International in 1939 covering World War II. He was the chief correspondent covering the Nuremberg trials and also served as bureau manager in Moscow.

Before that, he had worked at a public relations firm, for newspapers, and in small radio stations throughout the Midwest.

In 1950, he joined CBS as a Washington correspondent. He became anchor in 1962 of the 15-minute "CBS Evening News," which became the first 30-minute network newscast the following year. Cronkite helped make the CBS news report the highest rated in the nation.

He also narrated and hosted several CBS TV news shows such as "You Are There," "Eyewitness to History" and "The Twentieth Century" in the 1950s and 60s.

Cronkite's rise at CBS was briefly interrupted in 1964, when the network, suffering a ratings beating from NBC's Huntley and Brinkley, decided to replace him as anchor with the team Robert Trout and Roger Mudd at the 1964 presidential nominating conventions. More than 11,000 protest letters followed the decision. Cronkite, who had considered leaving CBS, stayed on, and in 1966, he briefly overtook the Huntley-Brinkley Report in the ratings, and in 1967 took the lead.

In addition to reporting on some of the nation's most pivotal stories -- such as the Kennedy and King assassinations and the moon landings -- he also coined one of the nation's most well-known catchphrases with his nightly sign-off, "And that's the way it is."

Cronkite's influence also extended to foreign diplomacy. In a l977 interview with Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat, Cronkite requested that Sadat go to Jerusalem to meet with the Israelis. A day after Sadat agreed, an invitation came from Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. It is considered a step that would lead to the Camp David accords and an Israeli-Egyptian Peace treaty.

In 1971, Cronkite published his first book, "Eye on the World." His autobiography, "A Reporter's Life," was published in 1996 and became a bestseller.

His awards include the prestigious Peabody Award twice and several Emmy Awards as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 1985. In 2003, he received the News World International's Lifetime Achievement Award, and, in 2004, the Harry S Truman Good Neighbor Award from the Truman Foundation.

Cronkite kept an office at New York's CBS News headquarters and traveled worldwide for speaking engagements and television productions.

He had been scheduled to speak last January for the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., but ill health prevented his appearance.

Preceded in death by his wife of nearly 65 years, Betsy Maxwell Cronkite, Cronkite is survived by his three children, Nancy Cronkite, Kathy Cronkite and Walter (Chip) Cronkite III (who is married to actress Deborah Rush) and four grandchildren.

http://www.wftv.com/news/20094616/detail.html?treets=orlc&tml=orlc_natlbreak&ts=T&tmi=orlc_natlbreak_1_07240107172009

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