Walter Cronkite died yesterday. 

I literally grew up with him. He took the anchor position in 1962 when I was three and retired the same year I graduated from college. I was the oldest of five children and we were expected to know what was going on in the world. We were quizzed at the dinner table about cabinet positions, world leaders and current events. Most of my information came from Walter Cronkite. 

 

Cronkite and his broadcasts honed one of my core values, respect for life.  I remember, very clearly, how he recited the number of soldiers wounded, dead and missing in action, during the Vietnam era. My recollection is of a stark graphic of the words and numbers appearing on the right side of the screen as I heard him say them aloud. The sound of his voice conveyed the information such that even a small child understood the significance of those numbers. 

 

Later in the sixties, during a Bob Hope Christmas special, the camera kept showing a young soldier who could not get his camera loaded.  The footage panned back to him throughout a Joey Heatherton song and dance number as he struggled to get the camera loaded, both excitement and anxiousness showing on his face. As Bob Hope’s voice told of the troop packing up and moving to the next base, he ended with “We don’t know if that soldier ever got his picture.”  

 

I cried most of the evening. At that tender age, I knew it was possible that young soldier would be a statistic read aloud by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. If that happened, I wanted him to have had his picture.

 

Mr. Cronkite used to narrate a children’s show on CBS that ran on Saturday mornings. I think it was called You Are There. The show recreated dramatic events from American and World history, as if you were there. The aforementioned five kids were expected to work hard on the weekends. We did yard and housework until the NBC Game of the Week game on in the summer or the Redskins kicked off in the winter. There was one exception and it was Cronkite’s show.  I remem,ber learning about the Lincoln Assassination and the Nazi invasion of Poland and more importantly, I learned to love history. It was my major at Villanova University.

 

Walter Cronkite clearly loved his work and respected his profession. We should all be so lucky.  His death reminds us that whatever we have chosen to do with our lives – be a parent, a salesman, a doctor, a CEO, an accountant, a coach, a teacher…whatever, respect it and honor it and perhaps you can change lives too.