Walter+Cronkite+21+G6

=Walter Cronkite=

Overview
Walter was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, November 4th, 1916, to Helen Lena and Dr. Walter Leland Cronkite. Cronkite lived in Kansas City, Missouri, until he was ten, when his family moved to Houston, Texas. He attended junior high school at Lanier Junior High School and high school at San Jacinto High School, where he edited the high school newspaper. He attended college at the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked on the //Daily Texan//. He dropped out of college in his junior year, in 1935, after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and sports. He entered broadcasting as a radio announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 1936, he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth Maxwell (known by her nickname "Betsy"), while working as the sports announcer for KCMO (AM) in Kansas City, Missouri.

Central Issue
In 1950, Cronkite joined CBS News in its young and growing television division, recruited by Edward R. Murrow, who had previously tried to hire Cronkite from UP during the war. Cronkite began working at WTOP-TV, the CBS affiliate in Washington D.C.. He originally served as anchor of the network's 15-minute late-Sunday-evening newscast //Up To the Minute//, which followed //What's My Line?// at 11:00pm ET from 1951 through 1962. From 1953 to 1957, Cronkite hosted the CBS program //You Are There//, which reenacted historical events, using the format of a news report. His famous last line for these programs was: "What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times ... and you were there. " On April 16, 1962, Cronkite succeeded Douglas Edwards as anchorman of the //CBS Evening News// (initially //Walter Cronkite with the News//), a job in which he became an American icon.

Although he reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombing in WWII, the Nuremburg Trails, combat in Vietnam, Watergate and the Iran Hostage Crisis, he was known for extensive TV coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury, to the Moon landings, to the Space Shuttle. He was the only non-NASA recipient of a Moon-rock award. The Beatles' first American TV broadcast was with Walter Cronkite. Cronkite is vividly remembered by many Americans for breaking the news of the death of President Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963. In mid-February 1968, Cronkite journeyed to Vietnam to report on the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. Upon return, on February 27, 1968, Cronkite closed "Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?" In 1968, the faculty of the E.W Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University voted to award Cronkite the Carr Van Anda Award "for enduring contributions to journalism." In 1970, Cronkite received a "Freedom of the Press" George Polk Award. In 1981, the year he retired, Jimmy Carter awarded Cronkite the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1985, Cronkite was honoured with the induction into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. On March 1, 2006, Cronkite became the first non-astronaut to receive NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award. Among Cronkite's numerous awards were four Peabody awards for excellence in broadcasting.

Conclusion
Walter Cronkite, 92, died at his home on July 18th 2009. Cronkite was the top newsman during the peak era for the networks, when the nightly broadcasts grew to half an hour and 24-hour cable and the internet were still well in the future. 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. Cronkite is best known for his 19-year stint as a news anchor and his coverage of the Vietnam War, which earned him the title of “Most Trusted Man in America.”

You can view Walter Cronkite's obituary here: []