Cronkite
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33 “There’s nothing I would like to have more”: Ibid.
34 “how broke his mother had been”: Author interview with Andrew Goldberg, August 12, 2011.
34 to honor Cronkite’s mother: “The Fun of Getting Your Senior Class Ring—70 Years Later,” Balfour Press Release, June 22, 2004.
Three: Learning a Trade
36 “being the ham I’ve always been”: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 28, 1998.
36 he was on the Tube long before Murrow: Lawrence Laurent, “Video Proves Nothing’s as Exciting as History,” Washington Post, December 13, 1953.
36 The Daily Texan was an amazing college newspaper: Don Carleton, “Cronkite’s Texas,” The Alcalde (September–October 2009).
36 journalism an extracurricular “flirtation”: “Walter Cronkite: News Commenter,” Detroit News Magazine, September 24, 1972.
36 Woodrow Wilson’s closest advisor: Ibid., p. 27.
36 Determined to be the big man on campus: Ibid.
37 “the campus big shot of Fort Worth”: Walter Cronkite to Helen Cronkite, 1934, Box: 2.325–E454a, WCP-UTA.
37 a “magna cum virgin”: Art Buchwald, “Anchor’s Away: The Life of Walter,” Washington Post, July 17, 2009.
37 he and Bit resorted to letter writing: Don Michel to Douglas Brinkley, October 15, 2011.
37 “For Vice-President—WALTER CRONKITE”: Box: 2.325–C130, WCP-UTA.
37 The only consolation he ever gleaned: Sharon Jayson, “And That’s the Way It Was—Revered Anchor Cronkite Fondly Recalls His Days at UT, Daily Texan,” Austin American-Statesman, October 1, 1999.
38 “I missed a lot of classes”: Ibid.
38 “I am experiencing great difficulty”: Walter Cronkite, January 23, 1935, uncited photocopy, WCP-UTA.
38 “She is genuine”: Walter Cronkite, “Miss Stein Not Out for Show, But Knows What She Knows,” Daily Texan, March 22, 1936.
38 Cronkite secured a job: Joe Adcock, “Walter Cronkite,” Texas Magazine, November 27, 1966.
39 “I’d never been in a place like this”: Powers, “Walter Cronkite: A Candid Conversation.”
40 Cronkite learned that to his peers he was: Walter Cronkite, undated [1935], Box: 2.325–E454a, WCP-UTA.
40 steel-trap memory: Carleton, “Cronkite’s Texas.”
40 “the man who gets behind the campus news”: Walter Cronkite, January 23, 1935, WCP-UTA.
40 “One could tell a wireless faddist”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 35.
40 warned Cronkite of misusing the airwaves: Carleton, “Cronkite’s Texas.”
41 “I could have been the Kaiser!”: Author interview with Kathy Cronkite, September 18, 2010.
42 “up with the pigeons”: Carleton, “Cronkite’s Texas.”
42 “I learned the principles of great journalism”: Nancy Martinez, “Vann Kennedy: 1905–1924,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, April 19, 2004.
42 “I have never found anything I like”: Walter Cronkite, undated letter [1935?], WCP-UTA.
42 “The columns to weekly papers”: Walter Cronkite, undated letter home, WCP-UTA.
43 After a year at INS, Cronkite was hired by The Houston Press: Michael C. Emery, Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996), p. 221.
43 “My duties consist of taking stories”: Walter Cronkite, August 8, 1935, WCP-UTA.
43 “the poor old wanderluster”: Ibid.
44 “Please don’t forget me Bit”: Walter Cronkite to Bit Winter, Don Michel Personal Papers, Anna, IL.
44 But instead of marrying Cronkite: Cornelia Winter Davis “funeral services” (invite), January 13, 1938, Don Michel Personal Papers, Anna, IL.
45 he romanticized the City of Fountains: Aaron Barnhart, “Walter Cronkite, 92, America’s Anchor, KC’s Hometown Hero, Journalism’s Conscience,” Kansas City Star, July 20, 2009.
45 “I have not met a really complete ass”: Thomas Hart Benton, An Artist in America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983), p. 275.
46 Evans’s father had been a student at the Kansas City College of Pharmacy: Tom L. Evans, Oral History Interview, August 8, 1962, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Independence, MO, p. 22.
46 “Simmons said, ‘Here is a man with the best radio voice’ ”: Walter Cronkite to Helen Cronkite, circa 1936, WCP-UTA.
47 Cronkite was asked what his greatest achievement was: “Proust Questionnaire.”
48 “This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna”: Erik Barnouw, The Golden We: A History of Broadcasting in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 77–78.
48 The whole CBS News “Round-up” crowd: Edward R. Murrow and Ed Bliss, eds., In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow (New York: Knopf, 1967), pp. 4–5.
49 the art of what he called “reconstructed games”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 67.
49 It was fake sports: Hilts, “And That’s the Way It Was.”
49 “I didn’t need many facts”: “Walter Cronkite 1916–2009,” Sports Illustrated, July 27, 2009.
50 “There were girls in most”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 52.
50 “I watched her coming down the hall”: Walter Cronkite oral history interview, p. 48, WCP-UTA.
50 “It was,” she recalled, “love at first sight”: “What in the World,” syndicated column, February 7, 1976.
50 “Betsy and I went from the studio”: Barnhart, “Walter Cronkite, 92.”
50 while earning As: Beverly Grunwald, “Capable Mrs. Cronkite,” Women’s Wear Daily news service, February 17, 1979.
51 “He used to be such a string bean”: “What in the World,” February 7, 1976.
52 Cronkite’s sleuthing subsequently showed: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, pp. 18–19.
52 “KCMO: Stupid Enough to Fire Cronkite”: Justin Kendall, “KCMO: Stupid Enough to Fire Cronkite, Downhill Ever Since,” The Pitch blogs, September 10, 2009.
Four: Making of a Unipresser
53 when it called UP a “scrappy alternative” to AP: Donald Libenson, “UPI R.I.P.,” Chicago Tribune, May 4, 2003.
54 Most important for Cronkite’s career: Richard Harnett and Billy G. Ferguson, UNIPRESS: United Press International—Covering the 20th Century (Denver, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2003).
54 Before long, UP, a worldwide news wholesaler: United Press International, 1907–2007, http//www.100years.upi.com/history.html (accessed September 19, 2011).
54 It is a business: Stephen Vincent Benét, “United Press,” Fortune, May 1933.
55 Cronkite would hand Swayze: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 78.
56 “Good morning, John Cameron Swayze here”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, pp. 27–28.
57 He hitched a ride: “New London Explosion,” Depot Museum; http//www.depotmuseum.com/newLondon.html (accessed July 28, 2011).
57 “It is not easy,” Cronkite quickly learned: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 64.
57 “Take oil from this town and nothing would be left”: Walter Cronkite, “Overton, Where Blast Occurred, Is in World’s Richest Oil Field,” UP, March 19, 1937.
58 Harry Smith of CBS Morning News was preparing: Author interview with Harry Smith, May 1, 2011.
58 “I got some very good lessons”: Walter Cronkite oral history interview, p. 56, WCP-UTA.
58 Unbeknownst to Cronkite, he was walking: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, October 18, 1999.
58 “I used to think life wasn’t worth living”: Lewis H. Lapham, “The Secret Life of Walter (Mitty) Cronkite,” Saturday Evening Post, March 16, 1962.
59 Cronkite came advertised on WKY: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, October 18, 1999.
59 “It was really one of the lowest moments”: Hilts, “That’s the Way It Was.”
59 “If you’re going to be doing an ad-lib”: Walter Cronkite interview,
Archive of American Television, October 18, 1999. See also Walter Cronkite oral history interview, p. 63, WCP-UTA.
61 “I loved the United Press”: Walter Cronkite oral history interview, p. 65, WCP-UTA.
61 “The management had not been happy”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 27.
62 “Officials of airfields throughout the nation”: Walter Cronkite, “Hunt for Plane in Which Flyer Was Kidnapped,” United Press, Oelwein (Iowa) Daily Register, October 28, 1939.
62 “State authorities appealed to airports”: Walter Cronkite, “Seek Hoosier After Plane Fails Return,” UP, Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger.
63 “I began calling airports”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 74.
64 “The general attitude seems”: Edward R. Murrow, This Is London (New York: Schocken Books, 1941), p. 17.
64 UP ended up sending 150: Harnett and Ferguson, UNIPRESS, p. 134.
65 Cronkite had, as he later recalled, all the “excitement”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life.
Five: Gearing Up for Europe
69 The church was bedecked: Kansas City Journal-Post, undated clipping, WCP-UTA.
70 the Cronkites went on a whirlwind auto honeymoon: Author interview with Chip Cronkite, November 1, 2011.
70 “We were traveling”: Walter Cronkite oral history interview, WCP-UTA.
70 They became great friends with another young journalist: Author interview with Deborah Rush, February 21, 2012.
70 One of her additional duties: James, Walter Cronkite, p. 45.
71 “My journalism was really trivial”: Beverly Grunwald, “Capable Mrs. Cronkite Is Content with Life,” Women’s Wear Daily wire service, Hutchinson, Texas News, February 17, 1979.
71 Cronkite’s United Press bureau: Gordon and Cohen, Down to the Wire, p. 11.
71 this led to five years of brutal occupation: Lance Goddard, Canada and the Liberation of the Netherlands (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2005), p. 22.
71 “The Dutch people would never”: Cronkite, “200th Anniversary of Friendship and Unbroken Diplomatic Relations with the Netherlands.”
72 she ended up getting her pilot’s license: Betsy Cronkite as told to Lyn Tornabee, “My Husband: The Newscaster,” Cosmopolitan, May 1965.
72 Cronkite had been at: Benét, “United Press.”
72 “If I hadn’t been trained as a journalist”: “What in the World,” syndicated column, February 8, 1976.
73 TV was too much of a “technological toy”: Henderson, On the Air, pp. 34–35.
74 “a perverse exhilaration to it all”: John Maxwell Hamilton, Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), pp. 317–318.
74 “A searchlight just burst into action”: CBS News Special Report, “London After Dark,” August 24, 1940, CougarGA7, in collaboration with www.archive.org and CBS News, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2576828/posts.
75 “Off to the east, searchlights poked”: Drew Middleton, “Eye-Witness to London Raid Finds People’s Morale Good,” AP, August 25, 1940.
75 “There was an awful lot of clatter of showmanship”: Powers, “Walter Cronkite: A Candid Conversation.”
76 Carroll logged detailed stories: Harnett and Ferguson, UNIPRESS, pp. 137–138.
76 “a long year of waiting”: Walter Cronkite, “Remembering the North Africa Campaign of World War II,” All Things Considered, NPR, LexisNexis transcript, November 8, 2002.
77 Neither had ever been to the East Coast before: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 33.
77 “New York is one of the finer spots”: Walter Cronkite to Helen Cronkite, January–February 1942, WCP-UTA.
77 Cronkite was worried: Harnett and Ferguson, UNIPRESS, pp. 138–40.
78 he was a “nut animal-lover”: Walter Cronkite Roast in Phoenix, Arizona, November 15, 1985 (transcript), http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/125802-1 (accessed July 7, 2011).
78 Cronkite would not be among their ranks: James, Walter Cronkite, p. 57.
78 “to avoid getting into combat”: Powers, “Walter Cronkite: A Candid Conversation.”
79 “I occupied the admiral’s cabin”: Walter Cronkite to Helen Cronkite, September 6, 1942, WCP-UTA.
79 “They thought I was a chaplain”: Cronkite, “Remembering the North Africa Campaign.”
79 “a derelict merchantman wreck had been mistaken”: Walter Cronkite, “Biggest Convoy Sent from U.S. Reaches Britain,” UP, August 24, 1940.
80 “if I can fight it through censorship”: Walter Cronkite to Helen Cronkite, September 6, 1942, WCP-UTA.
80 “United Press correspondent assigned to the Atlantic fleet”: Walter Cronkite, “Fire Guts Ex-Liner Manhattan,” UP, September 3, 1942.
81 UP was printing unrelated Cronkite-bylined: Walter Cronkite, “British Expect One More Blitz from Hitler Air Force,” UP, September 12, 1942.
81 “I was told to report to the battleship”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 38.
81 By reporting on: Harnett and Ferguson, UNIPRESS, p. 139.
81 The UP that prided itself for “the world’s best coverage”: “Shock-Troops of the Press,” advertisement, UP, Pittsburgh Press, March 1, 1943.
82 Cronkite was the new kid on the block: Joe Alex Morris, “Five United Press Reporters Sent to Africa,” UP, November 10, 1942.
82 Cunningham was known to cultivate a chummy relationship: Joe Alex Morris, Deadline Every Minute (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), pp. 260–261.
83 Cronkite had filed thirteen UP stories: Cronkite, “Remembering the North Africa Campaign.”
83 He had accidentally “hitchhiked”: Ibid.
84 he explained every big scene and small nuance of his North African adventure: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 90.
84 “It was enough to make a young wire-service reporter”: Cronkite, “Remembering the North Africa Campaign.”
Six: The Writing Sixty-ninth
87 “Walter would be at sea on Christmas”: “Betsy Cronkite: Problems of an Anchorman’s Wife,” Anderson (Indiana) Daily Bulletin, November [nd] 1968, p. 28.
87 it was determined to “compete toe-to-toe”: Morris, Deadline Every Minute, p. 254.
87 a voyage “abominable from every other standpoint”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, December 30, 1942, WCP-UTA.
87 whom Cronkite later called his “hero”: Walter Cronkite oral history interview, p. 99, WCP-UTA.
87 the high-heeled prostitutes, not the ordnance: Don L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 218–221.
87 “I thought Walter was one of the big guys”: Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.
88 Rooney deemed Cronkite “a tough, competitive scrambler”: Andy Rooney, My War (New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 86.
88 in a room he deemed a “cell”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, January 9, 1943, WCP-UTA.
88 “Joe Morris and Ed Beattie were organizing”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, January 1, 1943, WCP-UTA.
88 “What hours I’m going to be working”: Ibid.
89 “I’m going through my meager funds”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, January [nd] 1943, WCP-UTA.
90 about accompanying a Lancaster crew on its flight: “James M’Donald, Times Reporter: Retired Correspondent Dies,” New York Times, June 20, 1962.
90 “Royal Air Force bombers transformed”: James MacDonald, “Fires Rage in City,” New York Times, January 18, 1943.
91 “Walter was a charmer”: Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 7, 2011.
92 a “babble of tongues”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, January [nd] 1943, WCP-UTA.
92 The Latrio disbanded not long after: “Manhattan Merry-Go-Round,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 6, 1991.
93 “A Flying Fortress called ‘Banshee’ ”: Walter Cronkite, “Flier Claims He Was First over Rei
ch,” UP, January 28, 1943.
93 “It just seemed wrong”: Rooney is quoted in Michelle Ferrari and James Tobin, eds., Reporting America at War: An Oral History (New York: Hyperion, 2003), p. 53.
94 “ ‘Gosh, I wonder what Gladwin’ ”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite.
94 “I don’t know who decided to do it”: Ferrari and Tobin, Reporting America at War, p. 53.
94 “wild elephants couldn’t have kept Cronkite”: Jim Hamilton, The Writing 69th (Marshfield, MA: Green Harbor Books, 1999), p. 46.
95 was “to hold a ticket to a funeral”: Harrison E. Salisbury, A Journey for Our Times (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 196.
95 “Walter came back all right”: H. D. Quigg, “Uncle Walter: Making of a Superanchor,” New York Daily News, March 1, 1981.
95 “For the past week six other correspondents and I”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, February 6, 1943, WCP-UTA.
95 “I don’t know how that Writing Sixty-Ninth stuff”: Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.
96 “Walter was really the class clown”: Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.
96 “That’s it”—the plane his movie would be based on: Miller, Masters of the Air, p. 117.
96 a curriculum that covered “first aid, the use of oxygen”: Gladwin Hill, “Newsmen Train to Cover Raids in Bombers,” Schenectady Gazette, February 9, 1943.
96 “God help Hitler!”: Miller, Masters of the Air War, p. 115.
97 “There are ten of us here now”: Hamilton, The Writing 69th, p. 46.
97 “Listen, it happens”: Rooney, My War, p. 121.
97 Cronkite left Molesworth in a B-17: “Bomber Command Narrative Operations, Mission No. 37—26 February, 1943, Target-Wilhelmshaven, Germany,” WCP-UTA.
97 “It was terrible”: Quigg, “Uncle Walter.”
97 The crew and the embedded Bob Post parachuted: “Bomber Command Narrative Operations, Mission No. 37.”
97 Cronkite saw German FW-190: Ibid.
97 the crew gave Cronkite a job: Ibid.
98 “I fired at an awful lot”: Walter Cronkite oral history interview, p. 106, WCP-UTA.
99 “I had by far the best story”: Ferrari and Tobin, Reporting America at War, p. 55.
99 Cronkite and Bigart felt lucky: Hamilton, The Flying 69th, p. 116.