Go Baby Go

For people of my era Walter Cronkite was the face of the American effort to go into space and the land on the moon.

Walter Cronkite passed away on Friday July 17, 2009 at the age of 92. 

Image via Wikipedia

He reported the Kennedy assassination to a stunned country, he reported from the front lines in Vietnam, he explained the marches for civil rights, and the betrayal of Watergate.

Cronkite was born in Missouri and legend has it took to the idea of reporting after reading about journalists in a Boys Life magazine.  He reported for school and then small town news.  During World War II he traveled to Europe with other journalists with a unit called the “Writing 69th”.  He covered bombings, D-Day, and the trials after the war at Nuremberg. 

After the war he was offered a job with CBS by legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow himself.  Cronkite passed.  A second offer came, and this time he took it.  And with that became a face almost every American came to know, and listen to.  Truly an American icon he brought Americans all the news they needed to know.  And he did on the fairly new medium of television.

Walter Cronkite impassioned interest in space exploration was transmitted to his audience.  I remember myself as a child turning on the television and if Walter was on, it must be news about the astronauts.

Jim Carrey paid homage to Cronkite’s closing trademark “That’s the way it is.” in his movie Bruce Almighty, where he played a reporter trying to make it into the big time.  Jim Carrey’s take on it was “And that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

It’s hard to think that is was in 1981 that Walter announced he was retiring.  That’s a lifetime ago.  But we, the American people remember.  The world will not see your like again.,

And we salute you Walter.  As you now voyage where we cannot yet follow, we repeat your words as you watched the might Saturn V streak towards the moon -

Go baby, go!