The other great Walter of the 1960's slips away.* So much will be written about him that I'll skip the obvious stuff and offer just a few impressions.

Top of my list is the moon landing. It's sad that he should die this weekend, on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, because one of the things I most associate him with is that. (I guess I was too young when Kennedy died for that to be my dominant memory.) Many of us watched the entire unfolding of the space program through his eyes, but especially the moon landing. Watching him “break character” and show out-and-out relief just after touchdown of Apollo 11 was amazing. Some criticized him for that, but I think it showed he had not lost his sense of humanity. In modern parlance, it was a very Tim Russert moment.

There was very little news that didn't go through the anchor desks back then. It wasn't like now where the world was awash in data. We looked to Walter not just for the news but to know whether we should be confident or scared. He was an integral part not only of informing us but of maintaining our collective sanity. There is no real analog of that today, and it shows.

For many, I think John Stewart comes closest now. But even there we now have C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CNBC, etc. to back him up. Back then, there was mostly only CBS, NBC, and ABC. It was a lot of responsibility. I'll bet if that kind of responsibility were offered John Stewart, he would have the good sense to decline. But Cronkite wore the responsibility with grace.

I also remember a show called The 21st Century that predicted what life would be like in the coming century—the one we're living now. There was an episode that claimed that people would one day do work at a desk in their house and somehow money would just come out of the wall (or some such thing, but that's how I remember it). That seemed an impossible claim but again was fascinating to contemplate. And, by the way, I had my first telecommuting job in 1978 and I have done online banking from home for a number of years. So he was right on with that one. And there was another about cars that would drive themselves. That's technology that's probably not far off either. IMDB says the series had only two episodes.† That's amazing to me because I remember it bigger than life as quite an inspiration, like Alan Alda and his Scientific American Frontiers shows these days. Those of us who cared about math and science looked to Cronkite even to guide the way in that.

Here at Open Salon, Kind of Blue asked, “where have all the great anchors gone?” To understand the transition from then to now, I recommend (re)watching Network and also the fictionalized subplot of Episode 8 from Tom Hanks' series From Earth to the Moon, entitled “We Interrupt This Program”. These programs do a good job of illustrating the transition that news has undergone. To underscore the shift, consider that I went just now to Google and found numerous news stories about Cronkite's death, but none of them by CBS. So I went directly to cbs.com. No mention of his death on their front page yet.‡ That speaks volumes.

He was a man integral to the world as it once was. The world changed, and he became perhaps less directly relevant. But his impact lingers in many of us who survive him.

You helped to define and shape our world, Walter. We'll miss you.