"That's the way it....WAS"
Good evening from America:
Forty years ago this week, America did the seemingly impossible. We put a man on the moon. It was probably my earliest memory. I was three years old and for some weird reason, my nursery school had made us all sit inside during outside playtime to watch TV. I was amazed when I finally realized that "someone" was flying way up there! I remember standing outside on the playground that evening waiting for my mother to pick me up. The moon had risen early that day. It was one of those magical days that happen only to three year olds... there was a moonrise before the sun had set. I was certain that it was happening because there was to be a real live man on the moon soon.
I also remember thinking about that nice man on the TV that day. I was the only kid I knew who didn't have a grandfather (both my Mom & Dad's Dad had died before I was born) and after spending the day listening to the launch....he was what I knew my grandfather would have sounded like. And that began my love affair with news.
I listened to "grandpa" talk about a real live war somewhere in a far off place called Vietnam. He made me realize that I didn't want my Dad to go there to play soldier. I tried to understand why he talked so much about "WATERGATE"....I mean you open the gate & the water flows through....any farm boy could tell you that. Through assasinations and natural disasters, it was "grandpa's" voice, listened to over dinner, that kept me calm whenever the world went mad. It was his voice that replaced the screams of the Iranians who shouted "Death to America" in that weird sounding language. And I always thought the assasination attempt on Ronald Reagan was that much scarier because Cronkite wasn't there. (He had retired just three weeks earlier.)
Even years after his retirement, he was THE personification of news reporters to my generation. In the late 90's when he came out of retirement to broadcast the launch of a shuttle, I took a poll of all of the guests at the restaurant I worked at. I asked everyone if they planned to watch the launch on TV. An amazing number planned on watching. And of the ones that did plan on watching, I asked another question, "Why are you watching this time?" And almost to a person, everyone my age or older said, "Because Walter Cronkite's going to be on the air again".
You see, he really was "the most trusted man in America" to my generation. Today is Friday, July 17th, 2009...and that's the way it...was! It will never be the same again. God speed Mr. Cronkite!
I think the journalists who came of age during WWII never forgot that news is about life and death. News was not entertainment or a bloviating contest between talking heads.
July 17, 2009 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I find it somehow significant that Cronkite passed so close to the date of the anniversary of the moon landing.
July 17, 2009 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
As the specials air on Cronkite, I really wonder how the folks over at Fox are going to act.
To define the man it's hardly complete without the word 'integrity'. And it wouldn't really be polished without a few words like 'honest'. 'Sincere' comes to mind as well.
I wonder if Glenn Beck will say..."this was an honest, sincere man with integrity".
I take it back. I don't wonder at all.
July 17, 2009 11:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this, O.
I was seven when Amrstong and Aldrin landed at Tranquility Base. I had been obsessed with the space program since my dad woke me up a few years earlier to watch what must have been one of the last Gemini launchs. When we landed, I had my very first experience with the sensation of "heart in my throat." It's a memory wrapped up with the landing itself for me. I was distinctly freaked out by it despite my parents' patient efforts to explain that it is a normal reaction to intense excitement.
I don't think I was more excited than Uncle Walter.
I fear we'll never see his like again. Trained in the newspaper business in the days when they were the sole legitimate source of "real" news, learned broadcasting on radio in the midst of a catastrophic war. He never pretended that broadcast news alone was an adequate news source for the citizens of a republic, but always insisted that it could only act as a headline service. Thank you Walter, for all the moments when you gave us desparetely needed truth in the midst of a torrent of lies, calmed us with truth during our darkest days of tragedy and fear, and shared your contagious sense of wonder when we did the impossible. God rest your soul.
Reading this, its funny, how I said "when we landed" and "when we did the impossible." No one who wasn't alive can imagine how transcendent and unifying that moment was, how all of humanity stood transfixed and felt a part of it. It was an event that affected the lives of very, very few in any tangible way, and yet it was a day when everyone knew the world as they'd known it had fundementally changed.
July 18, 2009 12:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
How much did life change after we put a man on the moon? I just read this story in SI that Gaylord Perry swears is true:
It was an innocuous comment, thrown out at Candlestick Park one day in 1962 while lanky 6'4" Giants rookie pitcher Gaylord Perry took batting practice. "Hey, Alvin," San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Harry Jupiter called out to manager Alvin Dark. "This Perry kid's going to hit some home runs for you." Dark turned to Jupiter and, as Perry tells it, replied, "There'll be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry hits a home run." Seven years later, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind. Less than an hour after that, Perry smacked his first major league homer, against the Dodgers at Candlestick. "True story," drawls Perry, now 70 and living in Spruce Pine, N.C., with his wife of 14 years, Deborah. "I could hit fine in batting practice."
Since 1969 nobody says "there'll be a man on the moon before..." but people do say "if we can put a man on the moon then why can't we..."
July 18, 2009 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink