Walter Cronkite, Legendary CBS Anchor Dead At 92

Once dubbed “the most trusted man in America,” CBS anchor Walter Cronkite set the gold standard for integrity in journalism and on Friday he died at age 92.

Cronkite’s longtime chief of staff Marlene Adler said the veteran newsman died at his Manhattan home surrounded by family. She said the cause of death was cerebral vascular disease.

The face and voice of CBS Evening News from 1963 to 1981, Cronkite’s trademark style was applied to some of America’s most important stories, 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.
 
Not only was Cronkite the quintessential anchorman, he was the man for whom the term was coined.

In Sweden anchors are still known as Kronkiters; in Holland, they are Cronkiters.
  
His 1968 editorial declaring the United States was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam is seen as a turning point in U.S. opinion of the war.

His marathon broadcasts during the space race of the 1960s are still inextricably linked to those images.

Current U.S. President Barack Obama called him the “voice of certainty in an uncertain world.”
 
Once a wire service reporter and war correspondent, he upheld the ideals of accuracy, objectivity and compassion above all else.

This was proven in time by the way his reputation survived accusations of bias by Richard Nixon’s vice-president, Spiro Agnew, and being labeled a “pinko” in the tirades of a fictional icon, Archie Bunker of CBS’s “All in the Family.” Dan Rather, who eventually replaced Cronkite at the anchor desk, called Cronkite “a giant of the journalistic craft.”

Cronkite was the top newsman during the peak era for network news. As many as 18 million households tuned in to Cronkite’s top-rated program each evening. Twice that number watched his final show, on March 6, 1981, compared with fewer than 10 million in 2005 for the departure of Dan Rather, Cronkite’s successor.

For 24 years he also served as on-site host for New Year’s Day telecasts by the Vienna Philharmonic, ending that cherished tradition only in 2009.

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born Nov. 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Missouri, the son and grandson of dentists. The family moved to Houston when he was 10. He got a first taste of journalism at The Houston Post, where he worked summers after high school and served as campus correspondent at the University of Texas.
  
Cronkite quit school after his junior year for a full-time job with the Houston Press. After a brief stint at KCMO in Kansas City, Missouri, he joined United Press in 1937. Dispatched to London early in World War II, Cronkite covered the battle of the North Atlantic, flew on a bombing mission over Germany and glided into Holland with the 101st Airborne Division.

He was a chief correspondent at the postwar Nuremberg trials and spent his final two years with the news service managing its Moscow bureau.

Cronkite returned to the United States in 1948 and covered Washington for a group of Midwest radio stations. He then accepted Edward R. Murrow’s invitation to join CBS in 1950.

In 1940, Cronkite married Mary Elizabeth “Betsy” Maxwell, whom he had met when they both worked at KCMO. They had three children, Nancy, Mary Kathleen and Walter Leland III. Betsy Cronkite died in 2005.
  
With files from The Associated Press

Photo Credit: Brad Barket/Getty Images